Microsoft has contributed to the TM Forum Digital Ecosystem Reference Architecture (DERA) project some proven approaches to cloud architecture and management developed and battle tested during the evolution of Azure to a global, hyper-scale, software defined cloud.
The TM Forum defines a Digital Ecosystem Platform (DEP) as a platform that provides the necessary common reusable services to support one or more digital ecosystems. Microsoft Azure is a reference implementation. Azure Media Services is an example Digital Ecosystem.
A Digital Ecosystem Platform, like Azure, consists of several distinct layers in two distinct domains: Tenants and Platforms. The Platform Domain consists of up to three layers but not all implementations have all three. For instance, Microsoft Azure started with Platform Services over Physical Infrastructure adding Infrastructure Services later. Amazon Web Services (AWS) has been more focused on Infrastructures Services. If one considers a “Cloud MVNO” model or a syndication model, it is possible to conceive of a platform that has only management functions without actually owning any of the other cloud platform layers.