Microsoft Discounts Cloud Services Challenging Amazon

October 9, 2013 Leave a comment

Microsoft Offers Discounts Amid Ramp-Up of Cloud Service

Microsoft Corp. (MSFT)’s cloud and enterprise chief Satya Nadella, who has been named as a possible replacement for retiring Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer, today unveiled a price cut for some customers seeking Internet-based cloud services. Starting Nov. 1, Microsoft will offer discounted rates for its Windows Azure cloud service, as well as annual payment plans for customers who sign up for multiyear agreements called Enterprise Agreements, Nadella said at an event in San Francisco. He also introduced a version of Azure for U.S. government customers, which will store data in the U.S. and be managed by Americans to meet government-security requirements.Nadella is overseeing Microsoft’s efforts to catch up to Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) in cloud computing and the Redmond, Washington-based software maker has pledged to match its rival’s prices for some products. Amazon, whose Web Services unit was the early entrant, is the top seller of public-cloud products that let customers store and run applications in Amazon data centers.

Nadella said Microsoft excels at combining several kinds of cloud software and programs stored on a customer’s own servers.

“It takes someone to really stitch these things together,” he said. “Clearly, Amazon has done a good job in getting out there early. Azure, I would say, is No. 2.”

Ballmer announced his plan to retire from Microsoft within 12 months in August and the company’s board is currently looking at internal and external candidates to succeed him. Nadella was among the internal candidates considered, a person with knowledge of the matter said in August.

At the event, Nadella declined to discuss the CEO search and said Baller remains “very much the CEO today.”

To contact the reporters on this story: Aaron Ricadela in San Francisco at aricadela@bloomberg.net; Dina Bass in Seattle at dbass2@bloomberg.net

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Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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