[OrionSeven]

For our use case (fairly standard windows setup, sql server, about 8 VM's in total) Azure was less expensive, more so after we setup and saw true costs. We run our dev and test environments there and were able to get faster hardware & more storage for less as well (about 10% less for about 20% more). But again, that's a pure windows setup, comparing other components gets tricky because of different pricing models.