Extending its embrace of open-source software, Microsoft Corp. today released a bunch of new tools for the cloud platform Cloud Foundry.

Cloud Foundry is an open-source platform as a service offering through which developers can build, deploy, run and scale applications in data centers or in public clouds. The idea is that developers can write new software without worrying about the underlying infrastructure. It also allows businesses to create applications quickly without being locked into an infrastructure stack.

The new tools from Microsoft are aimed at enhancing how Cloud Foundry integrates with the software giant’s Azure cloud services. Along with the new features, Microsoft said it has become a gold member of the Cloud Foundry Foundation, which is the organization that oversees Cloud Foundry projects. Microsoft has likely decided to increase its contributions to the project because of its rapidly growing use by Azure customers.

“The use of Cloud Foundry on Azure has been growing pretty exponentially over the past couple years,” said Corey Sanders, the head of product for Azure Compute.

As for those new features, developers can now access Cloud Foundry’s command-line management tools via the Azure Cloud Shell, which is a feature of Azure that provides a terminal prompt accessible over the Internet. What it means is that developers who are familiar with the Azure Cloud Shell can set up Cloud Foundry using the same commands used on a local machine, without any installation necessary.

Microsoft said that Azure SQL Database for PostgreSQL and MySQL have been integrated with Cloud Foundry as well, which makes it easier for developers to use the company’s managed database service.

Microsoft also will take a seat on the foundation’s Open Source Service Broker working group. That group has set itself the goal of creating new technologies that can help Cloud Foundry to better integrate itself with cloud platforms like Azure. The company also said its membership would allow it to gather more information from customers and community members that will be used to improve Azure.

Stepping up its support for Cloud Foundry could prove to be a good move for Microsoft, which is fighting hard to win over developers from rival cloud platforms such as Amazon Web Services Inc. and fend off upstart Google Cloud Platform.

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