The Shanghai Municipal Government, Microsoft and Chinese carrier-neutral data center services provider 21Vianet have teamed up to bring Microsoft’s commercial cloud computing services - Office 365 and Windows Azure - into China.

As part of a strategic partnership agreement by Microsoft and 21Vianet, approved by the Shanghai government, Microsoft will license its technologies to 21Vianet, which will be in charge of providing a local offering of Office 365 and Windows Azure services through the Cloud and Azure as Infrastructure-as-a-Service.

Microsoft said the arrangement means companies can either choose to store data locally through 21Vianet’s Pudong New Area data center as well as Microsoft data centers in Hong Kong and Singapore.

By using a local data center, Office 365 will be opened up to a much wider segment of the Chinese market. The Azure cloud platform opens up the local market for public cloud services such as computing, storage, database and integration.

The Shanghai Municipal Government said it will use the services with data stored locally through 21Vianet. It also said it would help promote the wider use of the service in local industry.

It is said that the successful landing of Microsoft’s Office 365 and Windows Azure services in Pudong New Area will help Shanghai further develop its use of cloud computing software, hardware, applications and services, establishing a supply chain for cloud computing.

21Vianet CEO Chen Sheng said he hopes to use the Microsoft offerings as the basis for one of “China’s premier cloud computing platforms”.