Microsoft has added Engine Yard’s platform-as-a-service into its Windows Azure marketplace as it looks to push its cloud product out to developers.

The two companies announced the addition of Engine Yard’s technology to Azure yesterday, saying that it’ll give developers the option of using Engine Yard instead of Azure’s own platform features, which have been largely overlooked in comparison to its infrastructure-as-a-service technology.

What Engine Yard serves to do is automate infrastructure, orchestration and middleware, providing a platform for developers to run PHP, Node.JS and Ruby apps. The platform is a direct competitor to rival offerings like Microsoft’s Azure, Amazon’s Elastic Beanstalk, Google’s App Engine and Salesforce’s Heroku.com, as well as open source platforms like OpenShift from RedHat and Pivotal’s Cloud Foundry.

Bill Platt, senior vice president of operations at Engine Yard, said in a briefing that, “Engine Yard continues to be on the leading edge of cloud innovation, fundamentally changing the way companies plan, build, deploy and manage apps.”

“We look forward to working with Windows Azure to deliver a joint cloud solution that empowers developers to more easily and quickly deliver modern apps using open source technologies on enterprise-ready infrastructure.”

Engine Yard is best known for its ability to abstract the infrastructure layer of the cloud. It’s alliance with Microsoft means that its open-source cloud platform will run atop of Azure, giving developers the option of an additional secure and compliant platform that comes with a range of features and price points, whilst eliminating the risk of relying on a single infrastructure. Windows Azure customers will be able to access Engine Yard’s full features alongside comprehensive cloud support from its DevOps team.

The announcement is just the latest in a glut of cloud alliances that have been struck this week. On Tuesday, Microsoft surprised everyone by agreeing to a partnership with Oracle, while Salesforce followed by teaming up with NetSuite.

Engine Yard is expected to come available in the Azure Marketplace by the end of next month, July 31. The company has withheld its pricing information until that date.