At its Worldwide Partner Conference this week, Microsoft said Azure would be available commercially in November and unveiled the for the cloud-based application-development and deployment platform.

The company also said it would be included as part of the volume licensing contracts through which many large customers pay for Microsoft products, though it did not clarify how these contracts would incorporate both a pay-as-you-go model and licenses calculated on a per-CPU basis.

Doug Hauger, a Microsoft general manager, said that Microsoft would have much more detail on the specific integration of Azure pricing into enterprise contracts in November. But he said Microsoft would keep Azure separate from its traditional software licensing so as not to confuse customers.

"We'll make sure it's integrated into enterprise agreements and not complicated," Hauger said. "It will be just another page in the agreement. We want simplicity in how we license and [provide] access."

Despite these good intentions, Microsoft has already run into some complexities as it tries to integrate new pricing models for its more Web-oriented offerings into traditional enterprise contracts and the licenses they require for users.