But it can be tough to navigate through Microsoft at first. "It's kind of Byzantine to look at Microsoft and figure out, 'Where do I start to engage?'" said Jadallah.

Microsoft is generally not in the venture capital game, according to Daniel Lewin, corporate vice president for .Net Business Development at Microsoft. "We typically find the venture capital community would prefer to put their own money in because there's plenty of money in the venture community," and these firms are good at handling their investments, Lewin said.

Third-party companies benefit from aligning with Microsoft, he stressed. "For every dollar that we make, somewhere between US$7 and $11 is made by someone else" through the Microsoft ecosystem, Lewin said.

The issue of ISVs developing technologies that Microsoft itself may be working on was broached. Companies have to show how their solution rides on top of Microsoft's similar offering, said John Powers, president and CEO of Digipede Technologies, which makes grid computing software built on top of Microsoft's .Net platform.

"Something is being invented at Microsoft right now that competes with everything you guys are thinking of right now. You have to be able to work with that," Powers said.