What's the best practice on running hourly backups for an Azure SQL Database?

What's the best practice on running hourly backups for an Azure SQL Database?

I need to backup my production database each hour to the least as it
contains a lot of financial information. I've looked into SQL Data Sync
but considering the fast pace of schema changes we do all the time, it
won't do the trick.
This article:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/jj156170.aspx
presents a few methods of achieving this but i couldn't figure out which
one is better: Database Copy or Import/Export Service (.bacpac).
Another thing i came across is a technique for Database Mirroring across
different datacenters:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/jj870961.aspx isn't
there an easier way to do it? Why do i even need it if Azure has automated
backups? (Assuming they do have it).
My question is what's the best way to do it?
Features i'm looking for:
The process has to be entirely automated.
I don't want to write new code / scripts to achieve the automation.
This has to be reliable and the backup has to be simple to recover.
Thank you!