Microsoft Corp. yesterday announced the addition of an automated performance management tool to its cloud service platform Windows Azure.
In its official Azure blog site on Tuesday, the software company said it has acquired cloud monitoring company MetricsHub Inc. The Bellevue, Wash. firm is a participant in the Microsoft Accelerator cloud startup training and support program. MetricsHub’s service enables customers to cut down cloud monitoring costs by automatically scaling the service up or down as demand changes.
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Azure customers will get to try out a free version of MetricsHub, the cloud monitoring firm said.
“MetricsHub will now offer all Windows Azure customers our premium product as a pre-release, no charge through the Windows Azure Store,” a post on the MetricsHub blog site said. “We will also be converting all paying customers to this no-charge version of the service and MetricsHub technology will continue to keep your cloud applications running.”
The ability to scale services has become critical to cloud monitoring, according to Bob Kelly VP of marketing for Windows Azure.
“It’s difficult to understand, monitor and correlate all the applications data points that tell you how and when you need to scale your applications,” he said, “Then to get real value out of those data points you need to automate how your application and cloud platform intelligently respond.”
MetricsHub, Kelly said, is able to automate performance optimization with little intervention from users.
