<p>A vast majority of Redmond magazine readers are holding off on moving their SharePoint infrastructures to the cloud and the small portion that are typically opt for Office 365. However a growing number of those planning on running SharePoint in the cloud are looking at Windows Azure at the expense of Office 365.</p><p>To be sure, even the majority of those planning to move to SharePoint in the cloud are leaning toward Office 365. But an online survey of nearly 500 readers last week showed a surprising and interesting trend: While 66 percent of current SharePoint online users have Office 365 subscriptions (compared with 14 percent using Windows Azure and 15 percent using other cloud providers), of those planning to run SharePoint in the cloud in the future, 55 percent will opt for Office 365 and nearly 29 percent will use Windows Azure.</p><p>That points to a segment of SharePoint shops that are turned off by the lack of code portability from older versions of SharePoint. By standing up their own SharePoint servers in Windows Azure, they get the benefit of running their custom or shrink-wrapped apps in the cloud.</p><p>"People don't do customization of SharePoint Online using the old method because the product limits what they can do," explained Forrester analyst John Rymer, who, along with colleague Rob Koplowitz, released a study late last month of their own enterprise customer reluctance to move SharePoint to the cloud. "Integration, for example, is pretty limited, and Microsoft will not accept 'just any random code' and the rules indistinct."</p><p><a href="http://redmondmag.com/blogs/the-schwartz-report/2013/11/azure-as-office-365-alternative.aspx">Keep reading...</a></p>