>>That might be a business opportunity for you. If a customer can't easily provide the Windows infrastructure you need, offer them a cloud equivalent and bill them $X per month.
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>I would have to agree that Dmitry has some kind of a business case to build here. When I first read the message, I thought exactly like that. From my experience, the ones at the other end of the table would say "No". It would take a lot of justification to spin up a Windows Server VM in an environment not have any Windows at all. But, again, if Dmitry's component justifies it, it might still be doable.
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>As far as going on the cloud, problematic would occur to establish disk connection across the Internet with the current storage unit. I have the feeling he would probably need to access some of that.

My gut feeling is that trying to offer a Win cloud environment as payed service might be constructed as an attempt to milk/fleece the company, sometimes accompanied by sotto voce "warnings" that such an attempt/endeavor could introduce more security risks to "company secrets".

Less harm if offered with the alternative to build in Mono runnable on their form of Linux safely tucked inside their firewalls (if already done in C#/Win.Net), which would defuse most of the silent but poisoned background talk. Then discussion is only about cost and ROI to balance on both sides of the discussion.

my 0.95€ (have bite marks of such discusions)

thomas