Benioff will become a billing provider for Windows Azure

Zuora, the service that provides SaaS companies a convenient way of collecting monthly payments, will join the Microsoft Windows Azure  Technology Adoption Program (TAP) as the first on-demand billing and subscription management provider to be chosen by Microsoft. So the SaaS services on Azure platform will be able to easily integrate their products with the billing system to offer customers a range of flexible payment plans (for example, depending on the disk space, number of users, number of projects, etc.) to its customers, send invoices, accept payments through different payment systems and create various sales reports. Interestingly, that Zuora is backed by Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, the company that Microsoft is fighting with.