The number of people who misunderstand Azure is astounding. Want to run Java apps? Php? Ruby? Azure can do that. Don't want to manage your data center? Azure can do that. Want to manage parts of your infrastructure? Azure can do that. Do you need message queuing? What does it take to do that in Linux in your data center? Azure can do that. Do you run a web store and need to ramp up for the holiday season? Doing it yourself? Oh you need to buy a bunch of machines just to handle the surge, then they sit idle the rest of the year. Azure can solve that.

If the cloud is mistake, then Rackspace, Amazon AWS, and many others are just a waste of time and money.


>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 :)