Bangalore: Microsoft in an effort to promote its cloud service is lowering the price of its SQL Azure database platform to reach out to a wider range of customers and to popularize it among users who are looking for a cloud-based database solution.

Steven Martin, general manager for Windows Azure business planning, said: "To meet evolving customer needs across both ends of the database size spectrum, we are lowering the price of SQL Azure and introducing a 100MB database option."

Martin in one of his blog posting promised that customers will "realize 48 percent to 75 percent savings for databases larger than 1GB". Further explaining he said that the 100MB DB option "enables customers to get started using SQL Azure at half of the previous price, while still providing the full range of features".

The price reduction was considered after seeing the immense positive customer feedback and evolving usage patterns. Over the past 18 months two usage patterns have emerged, one them is that many projects start off with small database but quickly grow in size. To promote this pattern, "we are passing along better economies of scale and options for larger deployments", says Microsoft.

The company says that as an SQL Azure database grows, the price per GB will decline significantly.

In addition, Microsoft said, many cloud adopters and customers with smaller workloads want an inexpensive option for modest usage. "Just as we made a 150GB option available for customers with large database needs, we are providing the same level of choice at the other end of the spectrum with the 100MB option for smaller database needs."