Microsoft recently announced a swath of updates and new services for the Windows Azure PaaS environment that opened it up along several fronts, and as had been previously indicated, moved it towards the IaaS space. That move is creating new options for Microsoft and moving it into a position where it can begin to challenge the application-agnostic cloud services of Amazon and to a lesser extent, Google. We had an opportunity to talk with Bill Hilf, GM for Microsoft Azure to explore the strategy behind the activity. TechMarketView subscribers can read our analysis in Microsoft: taking a lead on integrated PaaS/IaaS. If you’d like to discuss subscriptions in order to get access to this and our extensive research portfolio, Deborah Seth (dseth@techmarketiew.com) will be only too pleased to help you.