What is everyone's thoughts on Emercoin? I know Microsoft has partnered with them on the Microsoft Azure Blockchain service and the price just recently skyrocketed, but I was curious how it compared to coins and like Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Ethereum. I am currently thinking about buying some, but would like some outside opinions first.
I know little about that project so I can't give you an opinion. What I can tell you is the whole "Microsoft Azure partnership" is not really very relevant. Azure is just one more hosting service provider anyone can host a node of any currency in any hosting provider.
Here you have an accurate description of the process by Fluffypony Monero developer who went through the process.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Monero/comments/4bs33o/monero_added_to_microsoft_azure_blockchain_as_a/d1c92rkNone of the above.
We contacted them, they told us what we needed to do. It basically consisted of signing a Contributor License Agreement, submitting a PR to the Azure templates Github repo, and sending them a write-up. Took us like 3 or 4 hours:)
All the altcoins saying that Microsoft is "partnering" with them are being disingenuous - you are a partner inasmuch as you have a BizSpark account and signed a CLA.
The upshot of this, however, is that developers that are already using Azure can build applications on top of the Monero blockchain, and are able to spin nodes up quickly and easily.