The cloud is probably OK for anything that is NOT demanding steady performance for long periods of time. It has costs advantages for running short jobs like daily web crawlers or when required storage is huge / needs to be distributed to many other locations. Almost by definition it is not an enterprise worthy platform.

You do not want to notice any interference from other cloud customers and their crappy queries. You want predictable response times and the control to tune it trough a high level of hardware control. You want to use SSDs if you are not working with massive amounts of data as it is cheap and gets you a massive speed boost.

Microsoft should acknowledge that times have changed and that server hardware is a lot cheaper now then it was not too long ago. Their product is costing relatively speaking more then ever and that is not a good position to be in. They need revenue from quantity instead of margins, have as many people and products work with their platform by making it as attractive as possible. That is how a business grows and survives big changes.

Charging more for certain features few need is fine, but excluding useful features for many from the volume products is downright "moronic". They should fire the guys at the marketing department, and I seriously mean this! They accomplished alienating existing customers and have nothing new to offer to potential new customers. Long term development will be that their product delivers less value as customers get less invested and use less of the features. Alternatives will have an increasingly easier time to take over customers simply by competing on price.