Microsoft Azure
Microsoft Azure offers a wide range of cloud computing services. With a free account, users can access 12 months of free services, 40+ services that are always free, and receive USD200 in credit.
Key Features:
- Azure Cognitive Search: Deploy a fully configured search service with intuitive user experiences such as scoring, faceting, suggestions, synonyms, and geo-search.
- AI and Knowledge Mining: Create searchable content using built-in AI and knowledge mining. Extract valuable insights from your documents, images, and media.
- Data Understanding: Better understand your data using custom models and classifiers. Tie your results to your business goals using rich, custom-tuned ranking models.
- Azure Virtual Machines: Free for 12 months, both for Windows and Linux.
Pricing:
Azure operates on a pay-as-you-go model. After the initial 12 months of free services and the $200 credit, users only pay for the services they use beyond the free monthly amounts. There is no fee to maintain the Azure free account and no upfront commitment. Users can cancel anytime.
Use Cases:
- Start, maintain, and scale a search index with minimal investment.
- Transform raw, unstructured information into searchable content with Azure AI speech, vision, and language services.
- Build knowledge mining solutions that extract valuable insights from your documents, images, and media.
- Meet business goals and industry requirements by better understanding your data using custom models and classifiers.
Free Products:
Azure offers a range of products that are free up to specified monthly amounts. Some are always free to all Azure customers, such as Azure SQL Database and Azure Cosmos DB, and some are free for 12 months to new customers only, like Azure Virtual Machines—Windows and Linux.
After the 12 months, users will continue to get 55+ services for free and will only pay for what they use beyond the free monthly amounts.