Business / Technology

Welcome to Microsoft Pri0: That's Microspeak for top priority, and that's the news and observations you'll find here from Seattle Times technology reporter Janet I. Tu.

Microsoft is acquiring Bellevue-based MetricsHub, one of 10 startups that participated in the most recently completed round of the Microsoft Accelerator program.

MetricsHub’s Active Cloud Monitoring technology monitors customers’ cloud applications and automatically scales the service up or down according to rules set by the customer. MetricsHub will now become part of Windows Azure.

MetricsHub said in a company blog post that it will now offer all Windows Azure customers its premium product as a free pre-release service available through the Windows Azure Store and will be converting its paying customers to the no-charge version of the service.

The Accelerator program — a partnership between Microsoft and tech incubator TechStars — provides seed money, mentoring, technical support and networking opportunities to startups that create new business applications using Microsoft technologies. The most recently completed round had focused on Windows Azure, Microsoft’s cloud development platform. The next Accelerator round, due to start in April, also focuses on Azure.