@Sil
Microsoft is tremendously undervalued in the cloud space
Microsoft Azure, in my opinion (based on working with a huge global client at the moment), has two major flaws:
- not the best publicity with regards to stability in the last 12-18 months
- too expensive, specifically for Windows instances
Let me expand on the second item. All instances are more expensive than in AWS, regardless of them being Windows or Linux instances, except for A0, which is almost useless for Windows Server with its 0.75GB RAM.
Now, if they don't want to or can't compete on price for Linux instances, I understand. But for Windows I absolutely don't, because they could decide to significantly reduce the margin they take for the licenses within Azure, if they wanted to, while other cloud providers would have to pay the full price.
They could over night destroy all other clouds on pricing for anything related to Windows and bring in a lot of Windows shops. The question is, why don't they? It seems the obvious thing to do. In the meantime, many Windows shops will consider Azure, realise that they don't offer a lot in comparison to AWS, and are even more expensive for Windows instances... so guess what they are doing? They stay where they are.
In other words, Microsoft are for one reason or another not willing to bring in a lot of customers they could easily convince. My guess is that they are more comfortable selling licenses to AWS and others and at the same time milking the hell out of the customers who are willing to pay for much more expensive instances (which really is mostly down to the licences if you compare the pricing between Windows and Linux instances across clouds).