Access Desktop app connected to "The Cloud" (1 Viewer)

Hello all,
Over the past week I've spend countless hours scouring the internet, and trying to digest what I need to know to develop an Access FE application that will reside on the local machine, connect to "The Cloud" and still retain the ability to use VBA.
This is best of what I've found so far:

http://www.fmsinc.com/MicrosoftAccess/cloud/deploying-linked-azure-sql-databases.html

http://gainingaccess.net/SQLAzure/AccessAndSQLAzureInfo.aspx


I'm hoping as a community we can help each other learn and use this "hybrid" technology.

I still have many questions about this in general:

• Is Azure's pricing competitive? What about performance?
• Is Azure the only option? What about other sites hosting SQL?
• AccessHosting.com seems to be another option, but I don't know what makes them different than any other hosting service
• How to handle roles within SQL or azure
• How best to obtain my users IP address and feed this back to the database security....Does this need to be manual or can it be programmed?

Any input would be greatly appreciated.

Admin, if we get enough good information, perhaps this is "Sticky" worthy?

Thanks Everyone!

Just completed a day long presentation. See the http://www.access-programmers.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=269523
I am a little more than behind at work and can't discuss it in detail at the moment.
We are expecting to receive the Presentation material through the Denver Area Access Users Group. I will make a point of posting that.

There are basically 3 methods (plus 1) that all use AZURE. They each use SQL Server Native Client. You will find code here for using a Access Client code to connect directly to the cloud.
One presenter actually uses Microsoft 1 Drive to distribute the Client (vba) connected to AZURE to his users (limited number).
The other Access Web Methods (Access Web, Share Point Access convert, and Visual Studio Access convert) each strip any VBA out to make it Web compliant.
They each have pros and cons of user control and such.
In a nutshell, Access can be Web enabled to work on any client including an Android as it is all xml, html and java script. Other parts of Access actualy get converted to SQL Server (AZURE) functions. I am not pretending those functions are efficient, however they tend to work.
In almost every case, the web front end is used for simple data entry. The full Client (using vba) is the link to AZURE for "administration" and reporting.
For example, add a new item to some list box. Do that with the full client.
The Web version doesn't have reporting short of SQL Server's SSRS, so I am not going there. In some cases, the simple users enter data. At the home office the full client vba version harvest the data, creates reports of some kind and emails that to the web clients.

Older Office Access Web was dropped "and now for something completely different" in order to merge better with .NET. My strong suggestion would be to go with Access 2013 (and for gosh sake, put in SP1).

There is a J Street all day seminar coming to Redmond WA soon. A lot of the same speakers. If you are really evaluating this, it would be so worth your day to travel and attend. They specifically cover the No User (everyone the same) security vs User profile. As you might guess, using the Sharepoint portal allows for better user control. But, it has its own extra overhead. It is difficult to put in 7 hours of excellent presentations in on post.
Then again, it might make you choose Citrix? One person attending was looking at a $10 per month per end user as an economic hosted solution rather than all the extra overhead of the Access Web. Even for 100 users, there is somewhat of an overhead for makeing code / table revision updates as the demo showed. With Citrix, it is all vba with local printers being used, total userID control.