We’re working on ways to provide free and low cost onramps for developers, and expect to make more announcements in 2011. Today, there are already multiple ways for developers to get onto Azure cost effectively:

Free Introductory Offer – provides a limited monthly quota of Azure resources at no cost, with standard rates applying above those thresholds: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/offers/

MSDN Premium, Ultimate, and BizSpark Subscription Benefit – provides significantly higher free quotas of Azure resources to MSDN subscribers for several months: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/subscriptions/ee461076.aspx

Cloud Essentials for Partners – provides free/low cost access to Azure resources to members of the Microsoft Partner Network. http://www.microsoftcloudpartner.com/

At PDC 2010, we announced Windows Azure AppFabric Caching – a distributed, in-memory cache for applications running in Windows Azure.

Based on Windows Server AppFabric Caching capabilities, it’s intended to significantly speed up access to data for your Windows Azure applications.

This feature is in CTP now, and should be generally available in 2011. You can find more details here:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsazureappfabric/archive/2010/10/22/windows-azure-appfabric-ctp-october-release.aspx