From their page (https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/fun...):

> Write any function under a minute - either when you need a simple job to cleanse a database or to build functionality that processes millions of messages from connected devices. Use your development language of choice (C#, Node.JS, Python and more). Pay only for the time your code runs and trust Azure to scale as needed.

Sounds like you'll be able to connect to other stuff.

IMO functions without side-effects are useless in many contexts, I'd guess that this is one of them, as you probably want to use the results of your computation somehow.