Azure virtual machine licensing advancements for MSDN subscribers

This is a good day for Azure developers, as can be seen from Scott Guthrie's announcement. Microsoft has now announced improvements to the Azure platform, and one of the major improvements is that (almost) all software part of an MSDN subscription can now be run in Azure without breaking the licensing rules.

Previously, you could only run MSDN software like operating systems and server applications on machines that you host on your own. Now this restriction has been lifted.

Another great change is that from now on, stopped virtual machine instances are not billed. Previously, you had to delete your virtual machines for the billing to stop.

For more information about the Monday's announcements, check the original blog post.