Accenture and its majority-owned subsidiary Avanet are now offering public-cloud services on Microsoft’s Windows Azure platform. The companies will start with Platform-as-a-Service and will in the future offer Infrastructure-as-a-Service as it becomes available.

Accenture’s customers can contract for design, delivery and ongoing management services of applications hosted in Azure with a single services provider.

Accenture chief technology architect and global cloud services lead Paul Daugherty said the company would help customers on their journey to leveraging cloud for business benefits.

“By combining the strengths of Microsoft, Accenture and Avanade and the power of Windows Azure, we can increase support for our clients’ cloud strategies and continue to help them achieve high performance,” Daugherty said.

The announcement extends Accenture’s already significant involvement in delivering Azure to customers. The company has been providing enterprise-ready public and private cloud solutions on Azure for more than two years, also integrating them with clients’ hybrid cloud environments.

The new end-to-end public-cloud solution is an extension of the two companies’ strategic relationship around Azure.

As the number of Azure customers grows, so do the platform’s infrastructure needs.

Earlier this month, Microsoft announced the addition of two new data center locations supporting the cloud. One of them is in the western US and the other is in the eastern part.

The new locations extended the number of Azure locations in the US to four. There are also Azure locations in Europe, Asia-Pacific, the Middle East and South America.