>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

Well, I wouldn't recommend managing self-hardware during these days. I have done some pretty intensive calculations the other year, and considering the licensing and all that which adds into the equation, it appears to cost much lower when going virtual.

There are still internal policies which do not want to hear about that. But, on the long run, everyone shall be assimilated, as we say.

As far as the persons who exchanged on the topic, yes, they do have some of that on their own. But, when I saw what Microsoft offers, it raises the question as to know why not go directly with them.

I believe not all ISPs would have the entire support for Azure such as Microsoft offers. So, they might have subsets of that based on their agreement. That is probably why they were not able to offer some of that in the early conversation. I have to say, when looking at Microsoft site, it does sound highly impressive.