Now in public preview, Long-Term Retention (LTR) allows you to enable your databases to create weekly backups stored in your own Azure Backup vault and extend the retention period built into SQL Database from 35 days to up to 10 years.
This drastically improves the functionality in Azure to serve as your offsite DR implementation.
Hit the jump for more info:
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/backup-introduction-to-azure-backup/?WT.mc_id=azurebg_email_Trans_1225_Tier_2_Release_Direct