"It's still 15 minutes into the first quarter, as my senior VP likes to say," Ketkar said. "It's still evolving technology. So I don't think any good developer has committed to any platform."

With its Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS), Microsoft is sell a version that is hosted on their own servers, not Microsoft's data centers.

With Azure, Microsoft is remaining more restrictive. Neither partners nor enterprises will be allowed to host Azure at launch, Ketkar said, but that may come "a few years down the road."

Such services, which would parallel the long-term unification of the Windows Server and Azure roadmaps, would likely be called , he said.