Microsoft plans to announce in July more of the business details behind its Windows Azure operating system.
The software maker unveiled the cloud-based operating system at a developer conference last year. It has said that some of the services, currently in free testing, will be released in final form this year. The company has said it will run Azure applications in its datacentres and will charge users based on the computing resources they need.
In an interview on Monday, corporate vice president Allison Watson said the company will give more concrete financial details and say how partners can help sell Azure at Microsoft's Worldwide Partner Conference which runs 13-16 July in New Orleans.
Until now, Microsoft has said merely that it plans to be "competitive with the marketplace" when it comes to pricing Azure.
Microsoft has also talked about having partners run Azure datacentres in other locations, but Watson said announcements on that front are probably further away.
"The economics of running a giant hosted business are different," Watson said. "They are interesting."
Microsoft is still trying to decide exactly which businesses it wants to be in and which should be left to partners, she said. When Microsoft announced Azure, it said that all the applications would be run from its datacentres. However, Watson said the company is also looking at ways that partners can host cloud-based solutions.
"We've had some interesting conversations," Watson said.
Microsoft already competes directly with its hosting partners in other parts of its services business. For example, Microsoft offers online versions of SharePoint and Exchange, but also has partners that host their own copies of those products for customers.
Even in a world where Microsoft is selling services as much as software and using the internet to deliver many of those products, Watson says that partners remain key to Microsoft's strategy.
"Partners have been our secret ingredient for how we grow and how we get things done," Watson said.
She noted that some of the key growth areas of technology — virtualisation, mobility and unified communications are places where customers need the skills of a partner as opposed to buying a software or service "off the shelf."
Even many of Microsoft's longtime competitors, people with big internal sales efforts such as IBM and Oracle, are starting to place more emphasis on the role of partners, she said. And even Google, she noted, is starting to get in the partner game, announcing a program earlier this year.
For Microsoft, it continues to invest in that area despite the economy, Watson said.
While Microsoft has cut some from its internal field sales ranks, Watson said the company has added some to its partner sales channel in hopes that third parties might be able to pick up some of the slack on the sales front.
And while the overall enterprise software business is projected to be roughly flat this year, Watson notes that rate is better than on the hardware side. Since last October, Microsoft has been trying to convince partners that selling Microsoft's software can be a bright spot in an otherwise tough economy.
