Great Article Peter, However It would have been good to do a performance benchmark between Azure and Amazon RDS using the same Database (loaded with sample data to different size points) and apply a work load file against it.

From Experience Azure seems average for speed but makes it rather hard to connect to as a non developer. The fact that Amazon RDS connects simply with SSMS is a great selling point for me, but at what cost (i.e security). Not to mention most Amazon services have a high network latency (from Sydney Aus) compared to Azure.