Cloud automation platform company ServiceNow Inc. said today it’s making its software-as-a-service offering available on Microsoft Corp.’s Azure cloud, as well as its own private cloud infrastructure.

The partnership builds on an earlier agreement between the two companies announced last October that enabled ServiceNow to deliver “digital workflows” through Microsoft’s Azure Government Cloud platform.

In today’s announcement, ServiceNow said it’s committed to making Microsoft Azure its “preferred cloud platform,” though it’s not an exclusive arrangement.

ServiceNow said the partnership is especially focused on “certain highly regulated industries,” with its software being made available first on the Azure Government region in the U.S. and certain regions in Australia. Its platform will come to additional Azure regions in the future, the company added.

The deal will also see Microsoft implement ServiceNow’s IT & Employee Experience workflow products within its own business.

“Expanding our strategic global relationship with Microsoft enables ServiceNow to more fully leverage and integrate our platform and products with Microsoft’s leading enterprise technology and capabilities,” John Donahoe, ServiceNow’s president and chief executive officer, said in a statement.

The companies expanded their original partnership with an intellectual property agreement in December designed to give ServiceNow protection against patent infringement lawsuits through Microsoft’s Azure IP Advantage program. The idea with that was to “promote ServiceNow’s adoption of the Azure cloud,” the companies said at the time.

Patrick Moorhead, president and principal analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, told SiliconANGLE that this deal is a big one on two fronts.

“First off, this is the first time ServiceNow will be available as a service so the company is now a SaaS provider,” he said. “In addition to Azure getting the cloud business, I am expecting further collaboration down the line and could see ServiceNow integrated into Microsoft’s ‘365’ services.”

Analyst Holger Mueller of Constellation Research Inc. agreed the partnership was important for both companies.

“This is a key win for Microsoft Azure as it has been relatively slow to win over ISVs to its cloud platform, and it’s also a win for ServiceNow as it simplifies delivery and leverages Microsoft sales expertise in government and regulated industries,” Mueller said. “Most importantly it’s a win for customers as they can expect a better return of R&D now, but that will have to be seen and delivered. The only downside is the ‘barney deal’ side of the partnership, with Microsoft standardizing on ServiceNow, as it gives the deal a bad angle. It would be good for IaaS and SaaS vendors to not have the mutual use aspect in their announcements, but these are common nowadays.”

Although Azure is officially ServiceNow’s preferred cloud, the company does enjoy relationships with the other major cloud providers. For example, it announced in May it was teaming up with Google LLC to add native support for Google Cloud Platform to its IT Operations Management suite. It also said it would use Google’s real-time language translation tools in its Service Management product.

ServiceNow also has several integrations with its products and Amazon Web Services Inc.’s public cloud infrastructure platform.

Image: ServiceNow