By Rex Crum, MarketWatch
Hewlett-Packard Co. and Microsoft Corp. announced Wednesday a $250 million partnership designed to simplify technology operations for businesses and promote cloud computing technologies.

In a joint announcement, the two high-tech giants said they plan to partner in all aspects of business technology, including servers, storage, software and networking, during the three-year pact.

H-P (HPQ 51.69, -0.28, -0.54%) and Microsoft (MSFT 30.27, +0.20, +0.67%) said the partnership would be based on an “infrastructure to application” business model, including collaboration on the Microsoft Windows Azure platform and offering pre-packaged technology offerings for data management and online transactions.

The two companies said they have been working on the new partnership for several months, and that some offerings based on H-P’s hardware systems and Microsoft’s virtualization technology are available now.

Speaking on a conference call, both Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer and H-P CEO Mark Hurd said the driving force behind the deal is the growth of so-called cloud computing technology, and providing easier access to business applications from multiple locations.

“If a customer wants to build those [applications] and deploy them inside their own data center or some other hosted environment, they need a stack on which to build,” Ballmer said. “Our customers are going need hardware that is optimized to fit into this application and management model that Microsoft and H-P are working on.”

Hurd added that the two companies are “talking about aligning big parts” of their abilities to go to the market with simplified technology platforms that are easy for their customers to use.

“This is [a] very deep level of integration,” Hurd said. “We’re talking about packaging up from an availability perspective, from a performance perspective, [and] being able to align logistics capability.”

H-P shares were down 23 cents at $51.74 and Microsoft’s stock rose 15 cents to $30.22 after the announcement.

Rex Crum is a reporter for MarketWatch in San Francisco.

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