[Positioning] PM Decision — Self-hosted only vs. hosted runtime for public preview

Decision needed

For public preview, is the server:

• (A) Self-hosted only — customers deploy themselves (Container Apps, AKS, VM, local stdio). No Microsoft-operated public endpoint.
• (B) Hosted runtime available — Microsoft operates a reference deployment with SLO + on-call.
• (C) Both — self-hosted for most, hosted for partners.

Why this matters

• Blocks the Azure MCP partner-registry submission (form question 9 requires a runtime URL).
• Determines whether we need an Entra-managed app, capacity plan, on-call rotation.
• Affects positioning ("Microsoft-official, Microsoft-operated" vs. "Microsoft-official, you-operated").

Recommendation

(A) for public preview, decide hosted-runtime separately as a v1+ workstream. A Microsoft-operated public MCP endpoint is a real engineering commitment that shouldn't be tacked onto preview release just to make the registry happy.

Acceptance criteria

• Decision documented.
• Partner-registry submission (question 9) answered accordingly.
• If (A): clear messaging in README that the server is BYO-host.
• If (B) or (C): separate epic for the hosted-runtime workstream.

Blocks

• Partner-registry submission.
• Tier 3 hosted sandbox issue.