How does cloud hosting compare to dedicated?

amazon or microsoft cloud hosting?

[Roxster]

How does dedicated "cloud" hosting compare to a dedicated hardware server?
I get the cloud concept, lower security maintenance, redundancy, alleged faster download times since the site is hosted in multiple cities (depending on where data centers are located), easier to reinstate a crashed website.
How is it in actuality for a small to mid-market sized business?

I have a 80GB Microsoft SQL database, is azure database a direct replacement? Or is there a learning curve?
Would I need to reprogram the website?

[not2easy]

Not the answers you wanted, but recent enough to give some good idea/bad idea insight and food for thought, a recent thread discussing Pros and Cons of Cloud Hosting? might help: [webmasterworld.com...]

[tangor]

Look at costs first. Look at proprietary/security second (your server v a third party). Look at scale (future growth) third. If the last one is not there there's no reason to move ... and only your business will reveal it that move is necessary.

While your DB is of significant size, any adequate hardware will serve the BITS AND PIECES queried from it to serve your site, in itty bitty chunks.

Personally I like to keep it all in house, but I can also see when it is necessary to take advantage of scale!

If world wide (your site) then one thing might happen. If hits per day exceed 1M, then another thing might happen. If house does not have adequate security, personnel, hardware, then another thing might happen.

Do your research.

Both platforms do the SAME THING: serve web pages. Pretty much like shared hosting. :)

Just talking about bigger hardware, redundancy, distributed network, and a MONTHLY BILL.