Windows Azure and the Move to the Cloud

Microsoft's necessary transition to a cloud computing platform is 's labor of love. At PDC in October, Ozzie unveiled Windows Azure, an operating system that lets companies run Windows applications in the cloud and store files and data using Microsoft's data centers.

According to Ozzie, this "Windows for the Web" will eventually facilitate all of Microsoft's enterprise software into the cloud. With Windows Azure, as well as Office Live and Live Mesh, that it is building a Windows-branded Web-based environment and is not, in fact, a desktop dinosaur.

So Microsoft has stepped in the ring with cloud computing players (Google App Engine), Amazon (EC2) and IBM (Blue Cloud utility computing platform), but it hasn't thrown any punches yet. Those companies have cloud computing platforms in operation with lots of customers. So far, Microsoft has only announcements and demos.

Because Microsoft is so late to the cloud computing market, it will need to move quick in 2009 to turn into action for enterprises.