Global IT player Microsoft has unveiled its new cloud computing service at a conference this week, where it detailed a feature in which data and applications will be stored online, rather than on individuals' computers.
The new service, named Windows Azure, was announced at Microsoft's Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles in front of 6000 software developers from around the world.
This latest move from Microsoft sees the software giant attempting to compete in the rapidly growing business of online software against established players, such as Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud and Google's App Engine - the latter being a natural progression in the seemingly endless battle between the two software giants to gain market share from the other.
Microsoft Azure aims to allow software developers to create new applications that will be housed on the internet rather than on the developer's computer. The servers for Microsoft's cloud will be contained within enormous data centres around the world, which can be accessed from any device, fixed or mobile.
The company also believes that internet users will want to store more of their own personal data, such as photos and videos, on the "cloud" servers.
Cloud computing is becoming increasingly popular, with many large businesses - such as Google and IBM - predicting a cloudy future for IT. With many large data centres now available to rent out space, businesses wanting to build online applications without having to spend additional funds will be able to use "the cloud" instead of more servers as traffic grows.
Consumers, on the other hand, face the prospect of the data and many applications they use being stored online "in the cloud" in the future.
Speaking at the conference, Microsoft's chief software architect, Ray Ozzie, said: "We're setting the stage for the next fifty years of computing."
Google's reaction shows the search engine giant to be unfazed by the competition. The BBC reports that Sam Schillace, who runs Google Docs, said: "Competition, even stiff competition from Microsoft doesn't bother us because it will either make the internet as a whole better or it will be irrelevant to making it better."
He went on to emphasise that speed, regular updates and focus would be what maintained a successful cloud. Can Microsoft keep up with the high-fliers or will it find its cloudy dreams taking a nose dive?
