>>>I know - you drink the Kool-Aid and spout the MS rhetoric about it, but you are very, very lonely in your opinion.
>>
>>
>>This is true. And the idea of forcing Metro on developers with VS2012 is also proving to be amazingly unpopular.
>
>Azure and 'the Cloud' are my current Microsoft pain points. All of Microsoft's new servers and applications are designed to move users into 'the Cloud' so Microsoft can suck $$ from them monthly. Their certifications are now heavily 'cloud' centric as well.
>
>I'm assuming Microsoft has devoted too many resources in this blitz to back off any time soon, so that is why my company is really, really looking for alternatives (not finding them though).

Despite M$ throwing kitchen sink into it's marketing, I highly doubt 'cloud' idea will ever catch up.
It is bad idea all together, plain and simple. Moreover, it looks almost like as if they have bet their entire farm on it,
(possibly yours as well) which might backfire eventually.

Whole concept of developing new apps which are (by the year) more and more disconnected from their data/databases (Web apps, NET layers etc ) does not really play to their major strength which was always - vendor lockup!

If I do not need to have servers and databases at my possession and I can access everything from my mobile or tablet somewhere in the cloud via rich web app, then Who_the_F. will need Windows ?? Linux can run web apps, and so does Android and I-OS.
Unless they planning to win over entire cloud/smartphone market from their much less talented competitors such are Google, Apple, Samsung and others.
I would not exactly bet on that, but you never know, (unlike you and me) some people really like Metro... {g}

Cheers :)