Microsoft really needs help in designing billing systems. I am sympathetic as in their entire history they never had a reason to bill retail customers. Invvoices generated through an ERP system are not the same thing as service bills tied to usage. Office 365 is terrible, but at least has a way of setting up a billing administrator that can view and download bills. Azure seems to have no parallel. I can't assign rights to just download and view bills to someone in accounting without giving them the ability to modify services. Plus the bills are hard to understand. sometimes hours of usage listed for a single server are physically impossible (more hours than are in a month…) etc.

Fix your Cloud Pricing Calculator.

It currently is almost completely non-functional. To see what one should look like go look at the Amazon Web Services pricing calculator

a) the slide bars without text input are horrific. I challenge you to try and figure out what a 3GB SQL server instance will cost you. Measure how many tries on the slider it takes to get it to be 3Gb

b) you have a weird mix of services, features and details:
--Web Sites are instances of a Web Worker
-- Cloud Services mixes Web and Worker role instances and the SQL DB on one page (but no Storage services ???!!??)
-- Data Services includes Azure Site Recovery ???!!??
-- Mobile Services include SQL server but not Storage Services (which you would use for stored files to be presented to the mobile device)
-- the "Full Calculator" leaves even an expert in your offering, rather confused

c) make better use of screen real-estate. I don't need the tab/icons to take up 1/8 of my screen at 1280x1024

d) GIVE ME EXAMPLES of configurations.

on AWS, I can see what services I need in a typical

---Free Web Service
--- Marketing Web Site
--- On Demand Large Web App
--- Media Streaming application
--- Disaster Recovery configuration

Basically Its almost impossible to figure out what services you need until your developers implement the solution. This is catastrophic for anyone trying to pitch the use of Azure to their management.

e) Let me use my "current configuration" as an input to the calculator. My Azure Web Portal should be able to feed into the pricing calculator so that I can run What If scenarios

Folks this isn't rocket science. AWS has been doing this FOR TWO YEARS....

One last thing. LET ME decide what zone I am purchasing from. I currently am on the road to my nearshoring team in Latvia. So when my CEO back in Washington DC asks me what our configuration is going to cost.... I have to answer:

I don't know exactly since I'm getting European Pricing. This is silly

Hi Microsoft,
I can’t help thinking that Microsoft is pursuing some sort of imperialist western agenda with the deployment of its worldwide Azure Datacenters! As an independent software developer based here in Dubai with clients right across Africa, The Middle East and the Sub-continent we currently have the choice of hosting in Western Europe (Amsterdam) which is between 6500km and 8000km away from our clients, or South East Asia (Singapore) 5000 to 11000kms away.
Guys it is time to realize that there is 2/5's of the world’s population nearby - let’s see something proactive in terms of datacenter deployment, and get the priorities right instead of deploying two new datacenters in Australia to service only 20mill people.
Get with it fellows!

see [REG:115031012492134] support reference for full history of this issue

Hi,
It would be great if you could answer the following questions:
1) Please show me where on the azure web site that it states that cloud services are auto deleted immediately if a subscription is disabled for any reason.
2) Please let me know if you also delete cloud services automatically without warning “by design” if a credit card expires or fails dues to funds shortage or the like?
3) Why do you want to seriously annoy your customers by designing your system like this????? That is a ridiculous design! How many partners and the like have you deleted all their work from when a subscription expired????? Please register my utmost infuriation with your management.
4) Please confirm if your standard email response which I received (see below) is wrong? It clearly states all data will be deleted in 90 days.

Hello David Hince,
The following subscription has reached its monthly free Microsoft Azure limit and has been disabled.
Subscription Name: Intertec Action Pack Subscription
To get details about your account usage limits, go to: https://account.windowsazure.com
If you are not in the last month of your subscription term, your Microsoft Azure service will be restored on your subscription's next monthly anniversary.
If you would like to re-enable service for this subscription now, you can upgrade to a paid subscription by signing in to http://account.windowsazure.com using your david.hince@intertec.com.au Microsoft account. Once there, go to this subscription and follow the link to upgrade to a paid subscription. If you upgrade to a paid subscription, you will only be charged standard rates for usage that exceeds free monthly quantities included with your offer.
If you are in the last month of your subscription term and decide not to upgrade to a paid subscription, all data will be deleted in 90 days. Please be sure to retrieve any data you want to keep.
Thank you!
Microsoft Azure