Microsoft has announced that as of July 1 it will no longer charge customers for transferring data in and to its platform-as-a-service Azure programme in an apparent bid to tempt new customers.

Currently, UK customers have to pay six pence per gigabyte of data transferred into the service and nine pence per gigabyte transferred out during peak times, from Europe and North America. Transfers from the Asia Pacific region cost 18 pence per gigabyte in and 27 pence per gigabyte out. Off peak transfers are already free.

Announcing the decision to make all inbound transfers free, at any time, via its blog, Microsoft the move will “provide significant cost savings for customers whose Cloud applications experience substantial inbound traffic, and customers interested in migrating large quantities of existing data to the Cloud.”

The statement continued: “Customers and partners with whom we’ve shared this announcement are excited by this change. The Press Association, the UK’s national news agency, supplies sports editorial and data services through Press Association Sport. As the official data partner of the UK professional football leagues, Press Association Sport plans to upload large amounts of text, data and multimedia content every month into Windows Azure and serve it across the global Microsoft network.”

The company quoted one of its customers, David MacLaren, president and CEO of VRX Studios, describes the pricing change as “a significant step in making Windows Azure more affordable for companies of all sizes. Whether a company is dealing with megabytes, gigabytes or terabytes, eliminating data ingress fees will significantly reduce their research and development, testing and operational costs.”

Microsoft launched Azure in February 2010 and the system competes with the likes of Salesforce’s force.com, Amazon’s Web Services and Google’s AppEngine.