Microsoft Finally Turns to the Cloud

Laura Rich says: Microsoft has finally stuck its head in the clouds.

Today, the company unveiled a plan to get into "cloud computing," the Web-based software-as-service model, with Azure Services Platform. Essentially, Microsoft will host applications for businesses and consumers that are built by internal and external developers using the company's desktop coding tools.

The move toward software-in-the-sky is a big turn for Microsoft, but also a necessary one if it hopes to regain the momentum it has been losing in the internet wars. Not only has the company eyed Google's dominance in the search market, but Google also has threatened Microsoft with its own cloud computing-like products, such as shared-documents in Google Docs (Microsoft Office) and calendaring (Outlook), among others. If the customers of the largest software maker in the world are cloud-bound, Microsoft has to be there.

But when will the company reach the cloud? Today's announcement in Los Angeles at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference was more oriented toward the developing tools that would be available for cloud applications (Visual Studio) than when it would roll out, how much it would cost, if anything, or how Microsoft would make money on Azure. Most likely, Microsoft would follow Amazon's lead and make money on hosting and other major back-end  needs that corporate customers and developers will have.
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