It can be difficult to find something to look forward to in January – but this year it was a little easier as a) I got lots of great Xbox 360 games and b) the Windows Azure Platform element of the Cloud Essentials Pack for Microsoft Partner Network partners went live.

I have previously explained what the Cloud Essentials Pack is and how you can access – but at the time I couldn’t share the details of the Windows Azure Platform element.

The Windows Azure Platform element is now available. It gives you each month, for FREE:

Windows Azure:

• 750 hours of extra small compute instance
• 25 hours of small compute instance
• 3GB of storage and 250,000 storage transactions

SQL Azure:

• 1 SQL Azure Web Edition database (5GB)

Windows Azure AppFabric:

• App Fabric with 100,000 Access Control transactions and 2 Service Bus connections

Plus:

• Data Transfer:  3GB in and 6GB out

(More details of the offer)

To activate this offer

You need to:

• Sign your company up to Microsoft Platform Ready (NB: there are other routes to get this benefit – but I know about MPR)
  • Read about Microsoft Platform Ready
• Visit http://www.microsoftcloudpartner.com/ and sign up.