IT Giant Microsoft has launched its new cloud computing service at a conference. The launch of the new Windows Azure was announced at Microsoft’s Professional Developers Conference in LA. There were 6000 software developers present for this conference.

The latest launch is an attempt by the IT Giant to compete in the speedily growing business of online software against some established companies, such as Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud and Google’s App Engine. Azure would allow software developers to create new applications that can be operated on the Internet rather than on the developers’ computers.

The servers for Microsoft’s cloud can be accessed from any device, fixed or mobile. These servers would be part of large data centres around the world. The company feels that the users would look to store more personal information on ‘the cloud’ servers such as photos, videos, etc. Cloud Computing is growing in popularity. Large companies such as Google and IBM have predicted a ‘cloudy’ future for IT.

With the availability of many large data centres 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 see this as an opportunity to store a lot of data and applications online ‘in the cloud.’

Microsoft’s Chief Software Architect, Ray Ozzie said in a conference that the company was setting the stage for the next fifty years of computing. Google on the other hand looked unfazed by the challenge. BBC reports that Sam Schillace, who runs Google Docs., said that stiff competition from Microsoft would not bother them as it would make the Internet better on the whole or it would be irrelevant to making it better.