In the second keynote of the day, general manager for platform and tools Eddie Amos addressed the company’s plan for hosting providers in a much more direct way than John Zanni did in the earlier presentation. While it was the context before, here software + services is really the subject.

And in this case, the context is (as is often the case these days) cloud computing.

Ask 21 analysts to define cloud computing, says Amos, and you’ll get 21 different answers (I think in this case, I think he was referring to a real scenario). Bascially, the point is that cloud computing is without a real firm definition at this point, but the hype surrounding the term includes optimistic growth predictions from many of those same analysts.

Microsoft’s need to understand the circumstances has to do with the company’s desire to make sure it has the right offerings, and to help its partners go to market.

Microsoft, like any company with a marketing or a strategic agenda, has to devise the right message and take that message to the market. Today that message seems to be that Microsoft’s “software-plus-services” strategy, which is in a manner of speaking its “cloud computing” philosophy, has a big element designed around partners. That’s not a surprising message to hear here, but it’s something they have to work at communicating.

Here’s part of Microsoft’s current case for software-plus-services. Companies across the software business are moving toward a similar strategy. Desktop companies like Adobe and Apple are building cloud components. So are enterprise companies like Oracle and IBM. Consumer web companies (Google, eBay) are building downloadable client applications. And SaaS companies like Salesforce.com are increasing on-premise functions.

Basically, having gone through the cycle of hype surrounding “everything is going to be on the cloud,” the answer is probably somewhere in between that, and everything being on premise. That’s software-plus-services.

Touching on the Azure cloud (another part of Microsoft’s strategy regarding the cloud): “This is a work in motion. And we will have partner opportunities at every one of these steps along the continuum,” he says.  I know that many hosting customers, including some Microsoft partners, are curious about how Azure is going to fit into their relationship. Microsoft seems pretty cognizant of that fact, and seems to be taking care to assure partners that there’s plenty of opportunity for them in the cloud model.

They’re still working on the business model, but they’re looking for feedback from partners at this event. One sure thing is that whatever they end up with related to the cloud, or related to on-premise technology, is going to fit that software plus services message.

I think a really important thing here, if you follow up what John Zanni said about how hosting partners should be designing their businesses to incorporate new services and move up the value chain from the simple commoditized shared hosting type offering, is that Microsoft is building its platform specifically with that kind of partner in mind. That kind of builds on questions asked in the Zanni blog post. That is – Microsoft’s business future depends on building the right platform for the hosting business, and it wants its partners to be the right kind of business to take advantage of the systems the company is building.