Discussion on:

How much is an IaaS VM worth?

This is very good practical information before you think to go for Public Cloud VM's.
It is also good to know that Cloud vendor prices can go down upto 50% or more when you are actually ready to enter the contract.
Do we need to consider other factors like
-Network bandwidth required
-Network latency between Client Machine and Cloud VM on which Server Application is running
-Discount you get on Power Consumption if your utilisation (Transactions) is minimum or nill except peak hours etc.
-How Cloud Services provider acts if you want to migrate to new Service provider
-How Cloud Service provider handles when you want to discard VMs at the end of the Contract

Thanks for the coment avindia. The additional considerations you mentioned are all the valid questions to ask after confirming the base costs for the IaaS VM are reasonable. Bandwidth costs in particular can drive the decision alone for some applications. A take-away from my article is hopefully that IaaS VMs are by their nature cheap--it is the other factors in the cloud provider's offering that will make or break the deal. - John

In the first session of a 3-part series on May 8th, Microsoft evangelists are laying out the costs and benefits associated with building VMs in the Microsoft Cloud. Details are on the TechNet East Facebook page.