Anyone who actually feels that this is incongruous from Microsoft's part should go ahead and sign up for the wonderful Live!!! experience...
You will Love!!! it...

How stupid can they get. Allow the businesses to finish a taxation year (personal AND corporate). That would in practice mean about 12 plus-a-bit months notice.

I am shocked!

Microsoft has become such a bloated dinosaur or leviathan that one part no longer knows what the other part is doing.

- One part tries to encourage customers to trust their online services.

- The other suddenly cuts off critical updates to online payroll services and begins to unilaterally phase them out with little warning.

- One part keeps reassuring its customers that the "next" OS or the "next" security patch/service pack will render their Windows desktops and servers impenetrable to malware.

- Another keeps doggedly generating an endless series of patches and OS's which all still apparently leave their users vulnerable to attacks that steal their data, finances, and personal identity.

- One part tries to take over all user media by bundling Windows Media Player with Windows, makes up their own media formats (.wma, wmv), and sells DRMed "plays-for-sure" media to their customers.

- Another decides to cut support for "plays for sure", switching the license servers off after raking in customers' money, leaving them with worthless files in place of the music they purchased.

- One part decides to try and convince the world that they are now buddy-buddy with open source.

- Another part spends millions to bribe ISO deligates to ram their competing "openXML" document format through the fast-track ISO approval process, just in order to try and displace the current open-source OpenDocument ISO standard. Another repeatedly threatens open-source companies and Linux with the "possibility" of patent law suits, and sues the Linux-based TomTom GPS company for using the now-industry-standard FAT file system.

The difference between the "real" extinct dinosaurs and Microsoft: many leviathans developed two brains that could make coordinated decisions and work together, whereas Microsoft only seems to have one -- their CEO -- who doesn't seem to have the ability to coordinate or control this huge, bloated company.

Historically, many businesses who have done business with Microsoft have either been destroyed when Microsoft no longer needs them, or purchased and shut down. Intel is a notable exception (as Microsoft still "needs" them). But the lesson here seems plain enough: do not trust this company, and seek out other, more trustworthy companies to fill your IT requirements (open-source companies, for example).

...for becoming too reliant on Microsoft for their business.

Did MS give any reasons/comments for this move?

NEVER NEVER NEVER trust your business data to online services.

Talk about shooting your own nuts off MS...

How many financial departments do you think are going to sign off on requisitions to host anything on Azure after this type of stunt?