Are you a UK based developer who has been put off from trying out the Windows Azure Platform? Were you concerned that you needed to hand over credit card details even to use the introductory offer? Or concerned about how many charges you might run up as you played with “elastic computing”. Then we might have just what you need.

7 Days of access to the Windows Azure Platform – for FREE (expires June 6th 2010)

If you are accepted, you will be given a Windows Azure Platfom subscription that will enable you to create Windows Azure hosted services and storage accounts, SQL Azure databases and AppFabric services without any fear of being charged between now and Sunday the 6th of June 2010. No credit card is required.

Important: At the end of Sunday your subscription and all your code and data you have uploaded will be deleted. It is your responsibility to keep local copies of your code and data.

Apply now

To apply for this offer you need to:

• email ukdev AT microsoft.com with a subject line that starts “UKAZURETRAIL:” (This must  be present)
• In the email you need to demonstrate you are UK based (.uk email alias or address or… be creative)
• And you must include 30 to 100 words explaining
• What your interest is in the Windows Azure Platform and Cloud Computing
• What you would use the 7 days to explore

Some notes (please read!):

• We have a limited number of these offers to give away on a first come, first served basis (subject to meeting the above criteria).
• We plan to process all request asap – but there is a UK bank holiday weekend looming. We will do our best to process all by Tues afternoon (which would still give you 5 days of access)
• There will be no specific support for this offer.
• We will not be processing any requests that arrive after Tuesday 1st.

In case you were wondering, there is no equivalent offer for developer outside of the UK. This offer is a direct result of UK based training we are currently doing which has some spare Azure capacity which we wanted to make best use of. Sorry in advance if you based outside of the UK.

Related Links:

• If you are UK based, you should also join the UK Windows Azure Platform community http://ukazure.ning.com
• Microsoft UK Windows Azure Platform page