I still view cloud as a matter simple renting servers but to get to rent them, you have to change your systems architecture completely. From what I've seen, azure has a long way still to go.

The power of the cloud does not at all seam to be processing power as one might think. You have to add roles for more cpu power etc. You have to do this while having no clue how much power you actually get, it's trial and error.

Another issue is the 30s limit on transactions. Ok granted, sql queries should never take this long, but since you do not know the strength of your service that you have rented, you do not know how much you need to tune your systems. What takes 2 seconds in one of the powerful servers you have today might take 20 seconds in the cloud. If you want to do a huge calculation, analyzing the market for instance, inserting millions of transactions and then doing the calculation, you have to batch this up in bits and pieces. Even the calculation itself! Because, if 30s is passed, you're screwed, your command is aborted.

So from my point of view, seeing how there are so many uncertain factors, only the "brave" would go for the cloud before we've seen some maturity of their services.