And not just that hardware is harder but also the IoT market is estimated at $19 trillion [1] creating a gold rush of sorts.

But yes, there is no shortage of IoT platforms (xively, dweet, nitrogen, data.sparkfun, ...) and I'm partly in involved as well. What I found interesting about the MS program is that recently they were giving away boards for you to try. So it seems they are in a position to provide the hardware and the platform.

[1] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-08/cisco-ceo-pegs-inte...