Local e-commerce software company Cactus Commerce is hiring more than 125 new Ottawa staff to support a new long-term strategic alliance with Microsoft Corp.

The company announced Wednesday that it has signed an agreement with Microsoft to "drive product development, partner ecosystem development, marketing, services and support of (Microsoft's) Commerce Server platform."

"Customers can expect to benefit from the combined value of Microsoft's expertise in building leading enterprise platform and Cactus's industry-specific solutions and deep knowledge of customer needs, product customizations and service integration," said Cactus Commerce's chief technology officer Jean-Yves Martineau in a statement. "This tightly closed loop between development and implementation will also enable Cactus to leverage the successes we've achieved with our enterprise customers to influence and drive the Commerce Server product roadmap going forward."

The partnership will focus on developing enhancements and complementary solutions for the Commerce Server platform, the company's release said.

As part of the agreement, Cactus Commerce said it plans to hire more than 125 people in the next 12 to 18 months, the majority of whom will work in its new 15,000-square-foot research and development office, which is expected to open in Ottawa by this fall.

Cactus Commerce began the year with about 150 local staff.

"This is a major inflection point in our existence," said Mr. Martineau in an interview with the OBJ. "For years we were working on research and development for Microsoft, but on a sub-contractor basis... and now we've come to the agreement that we ought to be equal parties in moving the e-commerce market, jointly designing and developing products to bring to the global market."

Mr. Martineau said Cactus Commerce now has access to a huge international market through its partnership with Microsoft, since about 57 per cent of all e-commerce applications run on Microsoft's technology.

"The research and development for that technology will now happen right here in Ottawa," he added.

He noted that the new staff will be focusing on understanding the trends driving the digital lifestyle and translating those patterns into Microsoft's e-commerce technology.

"We're living an increasingly connected lifestyle, and our team here will be looking at the human aspects of that lifestyle that we can integrate into the technology... to see what we can do inside Commerce Server to marry those trends to the platform and build products accordingly," he said.