To be honest, I actually prefer Paritioned Views over Partitioned Tables.  Try restoring just 3 months of a Partitioned Table to another server sometime and you'll
see what I mean.

Also, the nature of a partition can change just because the data becomes static in the older months.  That also means that the index requirements can change. 
Try to put different indexes on different partitions to support that notion and still be able to do a SWITCH.  😉  The non-aligned indexes that you must use to do
such a thing aren't aren't going to let you do SWITCH.  You might be able to use a filtered index but it will need to be maintained every time you roll and old partition
into the world of "static" data.