That's one benefit. Another is cyclical demands. If you're a retailer, you can host in azure and easily scale up for Christmas then down afterwards.

As a developer, if you need to test in a variety of environments, it may be cheaper to go with Azure then buying a bunch of machines.

>I went to an Azure bootcamp just to see if there was any real value to it.
>
>All I came away with was how not really ready for primetime it was along with the idea that the only reason for it was to make new monthly revenue streams for providers.
>
>I guess if I were google or something of that global size I might want my data in the 'cloud' so it could be replicated seamlessly to centers around the world for fast access.
>
>Since I'm not google, I found it simply a scheme to increase revenue for hosting providers.