[partiallypro]

1) I agree that Azure storage is possibly my biggest complaint about Azure; ESPECIALLY on Web Apps/App Service Plans. I think they are trying to solve this with the new "bring your own storage" model. But we'll see, the latency on the disks when the queue length gets too high is not excusable, imo.

2) This is no longer a thing, though during that transition period it was slightly annoying.

3) This is also no longer a problem.

4) I've never experienced this, the "pay as you go" model has been with me since I started using Azure 6-7 years ago. Maybe they do this for some licensing models? I have only ever paid for compute time, storage usage and egress. I've have used plenty of licensed software too...so I don't know what yours relates to.

Back to #1 though, if the Azure team could figure out why Web App disk speed feels so slow (sometimes), my company would probably double/triple our spend on Azure and drop some of their competitors. This is genuinely my biggest complaint.