Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella seems like an unlikely player in the fight against Ebola.

But Microsoft’s top executive unveiled a new Azure-powered research initiative aimed at furthering Ebola research along with other updates to its cloud platforms during a press event in San Francisco on Monday.

During the enterprise-focused event, Nadella again reiterated Microsoft’s commitment to being “cloud first and mobile first,” which has become the CEO’s mantra since taking over Microsoft earlier this year.

“Mobility comes about because of the cloud,” Nadella said. “It’s very important to us that we support every business in every industry in every geography.”

Nadella said the company is opening up Azure, Microsoft’s cloud-based platform for businesses, to assist with Ebola research and disaster relief. The company is now accepting proposals for projects that “are working towards developing a better understanding of the spread and cure of the Ebola virus and its associated factors.” Those that qualify for the award will be provided with Azure resources to help power their project.

Microsoft Cloud: the most complete cloud http://t.co/k5ZA0OzzGF pic.twitter.com/elAUuWlG7L

— Satya Nadella (@satyanadella) October 20, 2014

Microsoft announced new offerings for its enterprise customers, including the new G-series of virtual machines and the new Azure Marketplace. Each virtual machine supports up to 32TB of storage, which Scott Guthrie, Microsoft’s executive vice president of cloud and enterprise, said could support more than four times the memory of Google‘s largest virtual machine.

“Our new G-series virtual machines, along with Premium Storage, will enable customers to run the most demanding workloads in the largest virtual machines available in the public cloud today,” he wrote in a statement.

The new Azure Marketplace, which will allow Azure’s business customers to build and sell apps and services, will launch with hundreds of partners, including Oracle, Cloudera and CoreOS.

More @Azure news: @Cloudera enterprise now available in the @Azure marketplace – #MSCloud @MSCloud #MSFT pic.twitter.com/ClsMIftxUp

— Jeff James (@jeffjames3) October 20, 2014

Finally, Guthrie announced a new partnership with Dell on its upcoming Microsoft Cloud Platform System, a device that allows large data centers to run Azure.

Following the event, Nadella addressed his earlier gaffe, in which he implied that women should not ask for raises. “The last week and a half has been a humbling and learning experience for me,” he said. “I was wrong in my answer.”

Nadella acknowledged his answer was “insensitive” and that he mistakenly applied his personal experience to “half of humanity.”

“Women and men do get equal pay at Microsoft,” he added, saying the real problem was creating “equal opportunity for equal work.” Women hold just 17% of engineering jobs at the company, he said.

“We made some progress over the years,” Nadella said. “We do have some women in very senior engineering jobs. But we now need to be in touch with what are the key obstacles.”

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