Did you know that Microsoft supports two different kinds of queuing in the Azure Platform? You can view a comparison of both at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh767287.aspx.
There are Azure Queues and Service Bus Queue. Each have their own characteristics. Queues are a basic Rest based technology built on top of the Azure Storage Infrastructure for reliable messaging between services.
Service Bus Queues are have a greater set of features allowing for a lot more flexibility on connectivity, queue management and much more. The article referenced above provides a nice comparison from which you can determine which technology to peruse.
If you need simple queuing and your messages are of the correct size then the simple Azure Queue may work for you. Failover is built into the Azure Storage infrastructure which makes Azure Queues attractive so you don’t have to worry about storage if you wish to persist your queue data.
If you need something really robust it may be that you require Service Bus Queues. Workflows and transactions are often requirements that would prompt you to consider the Service Bus Queues.
Pricing is quite attractive for both queuing methods, although they are not equivalent. Again it makes sense to follow the article, especially if cost may be a factor.
Do you prefer a different queuing framework? Perhaps you have something running on your AS400, or SUN machine? Maybe you have a unix tool that works best for you? Share your queuing technology and how it works for you here, or drop an email to btaylor@sswug.org.
Cheers,
Ben