Microsoft wants more people to move their database workloads to Azure. They are constantly adding new features, capabilities, even tools to help people move databases to some part of Azure. It's working well, as the latest quarterly report shows tremendous growth in Azure revenue. We don't know precisely how SQL Server or Azure SQL databases impact this, but I certainly see more and more customers moving relational workloads to the cloud. Some to Azure, some to other providers.

In an effort to entice people, Microsoft has a promotion that they were running in March, which was asking SQL Server 2012 customers to move to Azure and save with free extended security updates. They reiterated the promotion on July 12, when SQL Server 2012 went out of support. They calculate savings and promote benefits, which might be tangible and desirable to some of you. After all, not having a supported platform isn't an option for some people.

Read the rest of The Azure Carrot