The move to the cloud follows transformations from the mainframe to the PC, from the PC to client-server, and from client-server to the Internet, according to Microsoft.

[ InfoWorld breaks down . | . ]

"So what is all this fuss about SaaS (software as a service)? Well, really, it is the transformation that cloud computing will bring to our industry," said Mark Hindsbo, Microsoft general manager for developer and platform evangelism, during the MSDN Developer Conference in San Francisco.

Microsoft is touting and the Azure Services Platform. With Azure, developers can use the Visual Studio software development environment to build applications for the cloud.

"The easiest way to think about [Windows Azure] is it is Windows Server in the cloud," said Hindsbo. It supports development using REST and XML services and native or managed code.