The Azure Service Platform, which includes the cloud operating system called Windows Azure, defines the scalable back end that will anchor the services portion of Microsoft's software-plus-services strategy, which it has been laying out in bits and pieces over the past three years.

The platform is the coming-to-life of the well-known Internet Services Disruption memo that Ray Ozzie penned three years ago (and recalls in a recent ) before becoming Microsoft's chief software architect. The memo laid out how Microsoft needed to embrace software plus services to remain relevant.

The , which has at its core a highly tuned operating system two years in the making, is no less than Microsoft's largest bet yet to achieve that relevancy as it moves into a market already active with cloud environments from , Google, and others.

"[Azure is] designed to be the foundation, the bedrock underneath all of Microsoft's service offerings for consumers and business alike," Ozzie said last week when introducing Windows Azure at the company's annual Professional Developers Conference (PDC). "The systems that we're building right now for cloud-based computing are setting the stage for the next 50 years of systems, both outside and inside the enterprise."

Ozzie showed a confidence and energy rarely seen in his public appearances as he tried to engage the developers Microsoft needs to woo to make the Azure services effort successful.