Windows Azure beats the competition in cloud speed test

I’ve been sent this from all over the place….

Well worth reading the whole thing, but here are a few extracts –

Microsoft’s Windows Azure has beaten all competitors in a year’s worth of cloud speed tests, coming out ahead of Amazon EC2, Google App Engine, Rackspace and a dozen others

Some of the numbers….

The Windows Azure data center in Chicago completed the test in an average time of 6,072 milliseconds…compared to 6.45 seconds for second-place Google App Engine….while Amazon EC2 in Virginia posted a nearly identical 7.20. Amazon’s California location scored 8.11 seconds on average.

… and availability too

Azure also did well in availability, with its Chicago facility hitting 99.93 percent uptime over the past month, significantly better than the 97.69 percent score posted by Google App Engine, and among the highest overall. Rackspace in Texas achieved 99.96 percent uptime, while Amazon EC2 in California scored 99.75 percent and EC2 in Virginia was up 99.39 percent of the time.