I’ve heard over and over again that the reason people don’t want to learn Azure, to explore it, to understand where it’s applicable to them and their business (and where it’s not, because, it does have well-defined limitations) is because they don’t want to pay for it.

Fine.

Don’t.

Do you have an MSDN account? What? You do? Then you have access to a credit in Azure and an account with a spending limit. Your credit level is dependent on what level of MSDN you currently subscribe to, but who cares. You not only will NOT pay anything to play in Azure, you will NEVER pay anything. You can’t go beyond your limit.

Want some more incentive (not that you should need any now)? Cool. Set up your Azure account with MSDN and you can win an Aston-Martin V-8. Well, you could, but I’m entered too, so I’m going to win (I work for a UK-based company, the car is red, I’ve been working with Azure for a long time… come on, it’s mine). Although, you never know.

If you do get registered for Azure and then want to learn more, faster, especially the relational aspects of Windows Azure SQL Database and SQL Server on Azure VMs, I am putting on an all day pre-conference seminar on exactly those topics at this year’s PASS Summit. Register here.

We can look at pictures of my new Aston-Martin.