As part of our commitment to provide the most cost-effective storage offering, we’re excited to share that we have dropped Azure Archive Storage prices by up to 50 percent in some regions. The new pricing is effective immediately.

In 2017 we launched Azure Archive Storage to provide cloud storage for rarely accessed data with flexible latency requirements at an industry leading price point. Since then we’ve seen both small and large customers from all industries utilize Archive Storage to significantly reduce their storage bill, improve data durability, and meet legal compliance. Forrester Consulting interviewed four of these customers and conducted a commissioned Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) study to evaluate the value customers achieved by moving both on-premises and existing data in the cloud to Archive Storage. Below are some of the highlights from that study.

112 percent return-on-investment (ROI) . Forrester’s interviews with four existing customers and subsequent financial analysis found that a composite organization based on these interviewed organizations projects expected benefits of $296,941 over projected three years versus costs of $140,376, adding up to a net present value (NPV) of $156,565 and an ROI of 112 percent.

. Forrester’s interviews with four existing customers and subsequent financial analysis found that a composite organization based on these interviewed organizations projects expected benefits of $296,941 over projected three years versus costs of $140,376, adding up to a net present value (NPV) of $156,565 and an ROI of 112 percent. Reduced or eliminated more than $173 thousand in operational and hardware expenses over a three-year period . Organizations were able to reduce spending in their on-premises storage environments by transitioning data to the cloud. Moving to the cloud enabled users to eliminate their tape and hard disk backups, while also reducing overall operating expenditures.

. Organizations were able to reduce spending in their on-premises storage environments by transitioning data to the cloud. Moving to the cloud enabled users to eliminate their tape and hard disk backups, while also reducing overall operating expenditures. Reduced monthly cloud storage costs by 95 percent. Organizations identified infrequently accessed data stored in active cloud storage tiers and transitioned them to the Archive tier, reducing their monthly per gigabyte (GB) storage costs by 95 percent. The Archive tier allowed organizations to augment their existing cloud storage savings. Over a three-year period, this saves an estimated $123,692.

How are customers using Archive Storage?

Toshiba America Business Solutions (TABS) sells digital signage and multifunction printers (MFPs), along with a complete set of maintenance and management services to help customers optimize their digital and paper communications. TABS created two Internet of Things (IoT) analytics solutions, e-BRIDGE™ CloudConnect and CloudConnect Data Services that are based on Microsoft Azure platform-as-a-service (PaaS) offerings, including Azure SQL Data Warehouse. Using e-BRIDGE, TABS remotely gathers device health data from thousands of installed devices and preemptively dispatches service technicians with the correct parts to perform repairs. With CloudConnect Data Services, TABS analyzes device health and repair history data to continuously improve product design and component choices. These solutions have helped the company improve device uptime and reduce service costs.

The daily configuration updates from printer devices were being stored in hot Blob Storage for four years even though they were rarely accessed. With Archive Blob Storage, Toshiba now moves these files to Archive Storage after 30 days once the probability of them being accessed goes down significantly. At this point, they also don’t need the files immediately available and can wait hours to get the files back. Archive Storage has allowed Toshiba to reduce their storage costs for this data by almost 90 percent.

Oceaneering uses remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) to capture video of operations and inspection work. The increase in overall video quality over the last few years has predicated the use of more efficient storage capabilities provided by the Azure platform. The satellite links provided onboard the vessels provide limited bandwidth to stream the video, so the traditional transport of media such as Data Box sometimes requires manual transport. The large amount of data per inspection, 2 TB a day in some instances, is maintained on Azure Storage. For the larger library of historical video, Azure Archive Storage is used to provide the most cost-effective solution for our customers who access the video via the Oceaneering Media Vault (OMV). Oceaneering has experienced 60 percent savings utilizing Azure Archive capabilities.

Regional availability

Archive Storage is currently available in a total of 29 regions worldwide, and we’re continuing to expand that list. Over the past year we have added support for Archive Storage in Australia East, Australia Southeast, East Asia, Southeast Asia, UK West, UK South, Japan East, Japan West, Canada Central, Canada East, US Gov Virginia, US Gov Texas, US Gov Arizona, China East 2, and China North 2.

Additional information

Azure Archive Storage provides an extremely cost-effective alternative to on-premises storage for cold data as highlighted in the Forrester TEI study. Customers can significantly reduce operational and hardware expenses to realize an ROI of up to 112 percent over three years by moving their data to the Archive tier.

Archive exists alongside the Hot and Cool access tiers. All archive operations are consistent with the other tiers so you can seamlessly move your data among tiers programmatically or using lifecycle management policies. Archive is supported by a broad and diverse set of storage partners.

For more information on Archive Storage features and capabilities, please visit our product page. For more information on Archive Storage pricing, please visit the Azure Block Blob Pricing page. If you have any further questions or feedback, please reach out to us at archivefeedback@microsoft.com.