Committed?
"Committed" as in "confined to a mental institution"?
Microsoft has updated its software licensing with a bundle to woo “highly committed” customers who build their clouds using Windows. Redmond’s November price list (PDF) gives loyal customers the option to consume a smorgasbord of serious server and tools software through subscription instead of using the usual site, server and …
"The price hit hardest among those using large numbers of Hyper-V virtual machines. Microsoft had, initially, seeded the market with free Hyper-V as part of Windows Server to establish a foothold against VMware."
Erm, no. Hyper-V Server is still completely free, Hyper-V Server is not part of Windows Server, and therefore the increase in the cost of Data Centre edition will make zero difference to the cost of running Hyper-V Server..
The increase in the cost of Data Centre edition of Windows Server simply reflects the increased power available per CPU socket with the latest processors. Which for licencing Windows VMs will have exactly the same impact on VMWare users as for Hyper-V users...
"hoping customers will soon forget about last week's worldwide Windows Azure outage"
It's still been historically more reliable than Amazon...who have had numerous major outages....