Twilio, a market leader in cloud communications, has entered into a strategic alliance with Microsoft to make Twilio''s voice and messaging APIs easily available to Windows Azure customers.

This strategic alliance introduces Twilio to tens of thousands of Windows Azure developers, who will receive a starting credit of 1,000 free text messages or inbound voice minutes with sign up.

Windows Azure is Microsoft's cloud platform for building, deploying and scaling web, mobile, enterprise and many other applications in the cloud. For developers whose apps require features such as interactive voice response, mobile app distribution via SMS, call automation or two factor authentication, Twilio's simple REST API delivers a flexible, scalable and reliable way to access global telecommunications networks. By joining the Windows Azure ecosystem, Twilio has made it easier than ever for Windows Azure developers to deploy voice and text messaging apps.

"In line with our commitment to serving developers, Windows Azure welcomes support from Twilio to make their voice and messaging APIs available on Windows Azure," said Scott Guthrie, Corporate Vice President, Microsoft. "We've seen the innovation happening around Twilio, and we want to make it as easy as possible for Windows Azure developers to build great apps that use Twilio's communications platform and take advantage of Windows Azure's scalability, reliability and flexibility."

"Windows Azure is a great example of how cloud computing makes developers' lives easier," said Twilio CEO, Jeff Lawson. "With Windows Azure, Microsoft is doing the heavy lifting of managing cloud infrastructure so developers can deploy apps that scale flawlessly precisely what we do at Twilio. Using our API with applications running on Windows Azure, developers can bring their voice and SMS apps to market and scale their businesses faster than ever we can't wait to see what developers build with Twilio on Windows Azure."