>>Well, that makes me even less sure what you're discussing here. Were you thinking of somehow using a physical Cisco ASA with Azure? I haven't looked into it but I can't imagine Azure (cloud) would offer that, it would be effectively colocating an ASA in one of their data centers. My understanding is Microsoft is going deep into SDN (software-defined networking) so having a physical device not compatible with that at a data center would be a PITA for them. In their cloud, that's the job of the virtual appliances.
>
>Everything is virtual.
>
>>So are you talking about the Azure cloud, or on-premise, or some sort of hybrid?
>
>Azure cloud

Hmm, it sounds to me like the consultant you spoke with earlier either:

- didn't do a good job explaining the concepts, or

- has their own canned end-to-end solution they want to sell you, so they don't want to explain the concepts because then you could buy your own appliances/components and roll your own solution