Improved Pricing Makes Cosmos DB Much More Alluring

December 5, 2018
Azure Cosmos DB
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Cosmos DB is a fine piece of technology. The real deal. But one that was held back due to its prohibitive pricing. Luckily, Microsoft has now fixed that, making Cosmos DB an even more alluring option.

Announced at BUILD 2017, Azure Cosmos DB, this geographically distributed NoSQL service is exactly what developers really wanted. This remarkably new cloud technology wasted no timing in outpacing every other cloud database contender.

And that comes as no surprise, considering the fact that Microsoft is offering cloud users multiple consistency models in the same database. Meaning, the choice of model can be a function of the workload rather than the product.

Essentially, instead of offering a particular kind of database, Cosmo DB was pitched as a universal backend for different kind of database, even future styles that may not have been invented yet.

But there was only one problem — pricing.

Good thing then, that the software titan fixed that this week.

Cosmos DB Logo

Many saw the Cosmo DB pricing as a nonstarter. However, instead of trying to convince these cloud users, the Seattle based company has adopted their thinking and introduced much lower entry level pricing to give these folks a taste.

At the container level, the minimal amount of provisioned throughput has been reduced from the fairly high 1000 request units to 400. This is equivalent of bringing the cost down from $60 per month to $24 per month.

Customers that split their data into multiple containers previously incurred the provisioned throughput minimum multiple times. Microsoft had previously introduced shared throughput by provision request units at the database level.

The minimum there is down to 400 as well now, down from 10,000 request units. This means that the entry level price for a Cosmos DB database with multiple containers is now also $24 per month, down from $600 per month.

Moreover, the provisioned throughput can now be stepped up at a more granular level, in increments of 10 request units, down an order of magnitude from the previous minimum of 1000 request units.

And with reserved capacity discounts of up to 65%, free levels of Cosmos DB via the Azure free tier or the special 30-day standalone offer for experimentation, and even an emulator, things just got amped up to where they should have been from the start.

Excited? Then be sure to check out Cosmos DB, and see what it can do for you.

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Marcus is a technologist, speaker, educator and writer from New York. He has a passion for how technology influences business. Marcus has over 30 years of experience in technology. He eats too much, and loves to sit in front of his computer.

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