I've participated in several migrations between on-premises data centers and Azure, where SQL Server workloads had a significant impact on the overall picture.
Customers often ask me for VM-based SQL Server deployment: they seem to be more comfortable with them for various reasons. I love Azure VMs, but I recognize they can bring complexity in the architecture. At the same time, the PaaS approach, based on Azure SQL Database in its different flavors, can keep things incredibly simple.
Like Myth Busters, let's go through different aspects like performance, availability, security, manageability, and costs to discuss whether an Azure SQL VM is the right target for your migration, or you should evaluate Azure SQL PaaS services.