Feb 13, 2017 01:34 PM EST By Jordan Pine, UniversityHerald Reporter

The escalating cloud war has pushed Microsoft to reduce its prices for Azure services by as much as 61 percent in some cases. Amazon Web Services (AWS) has done it in the past with Microsoft following lead giving customers huge discounts and better services like the recent Microsoft Azure IP Advantage.

Microsoft is at second place trailing behind by a mile for industry leader AWS as the top cloud service provider. However, the Redmond-based giant is intent on pushing Microsoft Azure in the lead through price cuts and better services.

Microsoft Azure Drops Price

Venkat Gattamneri, director of product marketing of Microsoft revealed that they are offering a comprehensive cloud platform for customers to innovate at the best possible prices. For this purpose, Microsoft Azure Virtual Machine Families and storage types have reduced their prices. The company hopes to break down the barrier and entice more customers to use their cloud services.

Microsoft has reduced its prices for the compute optimized instances-F series by as much as 24 percent. Meanwhile, the general purpose instances-A1 Basic has a price reduction by a whopping 61 percent. The company is also planning to drop the prices of the general purpose instances-D series soon, CIO Today reported. Previously, Microsoft already reduced the Azure Blob storage devices of customers with Azure Blob accounts by 38 percent.

Microsoft Azure IP Advantage

Not only is the Redmond giant cutting down its prices for its cloud services, but continues to add services to help their customers. As more developers, entrepreneurs, and business embrace the cloud, a new risk has also emerged. For this reason, Microsoft has launched the Microsoft Azure IP Advantage program, which is designed to help customers from such intellectual property risks.

For the last five years, cloud-based litigation rose to 22 percent based on a new study by a Boston consulting group. Patent trolls have been victorious, grabbing cloud-related patents by as much as 35 percent. The new Microsoft Azure program aims to provide customers protection from lawsuits and enable them to focus on their tasks like coding or responding to the ever-changing needs of consumers.

The Microsoft Azure IP Advantage allows customers to have access to 10,000 Microsoft patents. These patents comprise the bulk of the company's overall patent portfolio, which is the result of cutting-edge innovations by the best people across the globe according to Network Asia. Access to Microsoft patents enables customers to defend themselves against potential intellectual property lawsuits.

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