After learning about Virtual Machines (VM) on Microsoft Azure and how they can be configured to be recognized by your network, I did a quick experiment to see if I could install Sage 500 on a Azure VM running SQL Server 2012.  I didn't opt for using an Azure SQL Database as there is code within the 500 database that isn't allowed on Azure SQL.  Also, the VM has full SQL capabilities such as SSIS which is needed by Data Migrator.

Using Microsoft's instructions for creating and configuring this type of VM, I had it up and running within a half hour and was able to log into the VM's SQL Server from my local installation of SQL Server Management Studio.

I next tried to run the DB utilities to create a new database on Azure from my local client.  However, this failed because I couldn't install the registration DLL onto the VM.  To work around the problem, I simply installed the DB Utilities onto the VM in order to create the database. 

Once the database was installed and running on the Azure VM, it was a simple matter of using my locally installed client to connect to it and get it properly registered.  I didn't notice any issues using the DNS name provided by Azure to set up the connection.

Since this was an experiment, this configuration hasn't been tested by Sage, so it is probably not supported.  However, since it appears it can be done, I would recommend Sage do their own internal testing as this gives another option for customers on how to set up their Sage 500 environments as well as take advantage of some of the cloud capabilities Microsoft Azure has to offer.