Microsoft (MSFT) has released its Azure Cost Estimator Tool to the general public. The tool, which was put into beta testing in June, was designed as an installable application that takes a detailed look at the applications and services running on an on-premise IT infrastructure and then estimates the costs of running those same apps and services within the Azure public cloud.

As noted on Windows IT Pro, the tool was designed to support virtualization products including Hyper-V, System Center Virtual Machine Manager, VMware vCenter and ESXi, as well as both Windows and Linux physical machines.

The beta ran through the summer and was expected to shut down at the beginning of September. Microsoft has released the general availability version of the tool, which is installable on Windows Vista and later Windows versions up to Windows Server 2012 R2.

So far, the tool is only available in the United States.

From the Microsoft Azure Cost Estimator Tool website: “The Azure (IaaS) Cost Estimator has been designed keeping in mind the need to provide the IT manager of next generation organizations the ability to quickly assess running cost of the existing on-premises workload on Azure.”

For Microsoft Azure partners, this could be a nice feather in their cap to have. Being able to show a cost analysis of cloud versus traditional IT is a powerful function to have—and one that could be the difference between a customer shifting to the cloud or choosing to stay with their existing IT infrastructure.