Last October at Microsoft's Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles you may remember that they unveiled their cloud computing service.....

Dubbed "Windows Azure", Microsoft have since been quite tight lipped about its "Cloud" offering however over the last few weeks they have started to drop very strong hints on various technology blogs as to what their offering will actually provide. In fact Microsoft seem to be almost bullish in their approach and there is certainly a growing confidence from the US giant that they can not only compete but overtake their main rivals in this sector - Google and Amazon.

Firstly the framework for this technology will be released with the impending release of (or very soon thereafter) Windows 7.  Also the next release of their highly successful Office software product - Office 2010 will be available with "web apps" capabilities - this in conjuction with its already released and highly rated Outlook live, Windows live and Windows skydrive solutions means that they are ready to really take on their competitors.

Secondly huge investment has been made by Microsoft in it's data centres ( see the link below ) so that they are ready for the anticipated demand. This investment will enable users to store far more of their data - personal or business on Microsoft's Cloud servers rather than their own hardware, meaning that data can then be accessed anywhere in the world from any device. Microsoft are also keen for amateur and professional developers to have the freedom and capability to build new applications which can live on the internet, rather than on their own computers/servers.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7694471.stm

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