Allow more support for consuming requests in JSON and returning responses in JSON.

As a majority of rich web apps use Javascript, I would only image this would be huge.

There are lots of scenarios where WCF is an overkill, and a simple HTTP listener could reduce the round-trip time, reduce costs, and enable us the users with a more suitable, tailor made solution.

We have the need for ultra-fast record range retrieval from table storage (a la on-site SQL Server) from our web roles in the same data center. This is driving a data-intensive BI engine that relies on low-latency access to massive streams of data. Currently, we are looking to MongoDB to fill this gap.

Restricting us to only the row key is very limiting. We currently have to maintain our own secondary indexes for other columns and this is very cumbersome, it should be a feature of the platform.

It is a bit harrowing to realize that you missed something out in your cscfg after you have deployed your app on the cloud. Sure...there is a feature wherein you can tweak the cscfg file without having to redeploy the package. But most of the times if new settings have been added to cscfg then same must be reflected on to csdef...thus eventually even if you do manipulate cscfg as per your needs you still have to redeploy the app because there is no facility to modify csdef.....

It is far too easy to make a configuration mistake that leads to huge costs. For instance, selecting instance size in VS2010 is a dropdown and selecting an Extra Large instance instead of Extra small instance is very easy. There is no warning. This should harder and more intuitive (e.g. a slider with color coding, green for low cost red for high cost). Also, you should be able to set a quota. One so you get a warning when you exceed certain costs, one to undeploy automatically if you exceed certain costs.

We should be able to fully customize the VPN gateway parameters for phase 1 & 2 negotiations:

* Specify the pre-shared key
* Lifetime values
* Encryption
* Static IP address that won't change if the gateway is deleted and recreated
* etc.

I would like to be able to provide access to the blob service *somewhat* directly instead of proxying the calls through another service.
I'm thinking of smart client applications that would allow my clients to login using ASP.NET authentication and browse blobs and tables for which they have the authority to view.

Please make the log table names configurable instead of hard coding them ex: WADLogsTable, so that we can support multi-tenant in same storage account. It is not worthy to write tracelisteners just to have different log table name.

The idea would be that the AppFabric and all other Services (IIS, SQL and such) would log to a running Logging Agent.
A special API would allow you to: 1) capture real-time the events coming in on the Agent, 2) Set the logging level, application and other filters to increase of decrease the amount of messages,
3) You would be able to log from your application to the Logging Agent.

Web role instances should be able to communicate amongst themselves directly via TCP. It seems weird that something this basic is allowed on the worker role but not allowed on the web role.

Support for account usage alerts for the subscriptions which is about to expiry or is about to exceed spending limit

Also there should be a way to setup custom alerts for account usage and expiration . it would be nice to get an automated email when account usage is 50 % 70% and 90% etc.

Add an easy way to set a max bill amount, Say you want to test an application but only spend 100 £/$ on doing so.

Provide email server for Web sites. The extra cost of SendGrid (not even an email host) makes Azure unnafordable for many small shops.