Microsoft launched Azure, it's cloud computing platform entry, today at PDC in LA. No real surprises to the announcement that I can see, although the company took the opportunity to signal its intention to offer large datasets of public and commercial information to users (a la Amazon's Public Data Sets offered on AWS; it wasn't immediately clear if Microsoft would be charging for the data itself or, as Amazon does, just the compute cycles and storage used by the client applications) and managed to point the event back toward more traditional platforms by focusing on the AppFabric system it has developed for integrating applications across in-house and cloud platforms.

While cloud purists may scoff and see this move as an effort by Microsoft to protect its application market share, I think it is probably a great move to make things easier for businesses concerned about transitioning to cloud service models. Allowing businesses to throttle into cloud delivery gradually rather than making an all-or-nothing commitment will soothe CIO apprehensions and make lives easier in a lot of IT departments. That's a flash of the old brilliance that Microsoft exhibited when it was out storming the desktop and server markets in the first place. With a little more confidence in, and muscle behind, Azure, it could well manage the same feat among cloud platforms. Does Amazon have a dominant market share right now? Sure. So did Novell when Windows Server first came out. I don't question whether or not Microsoft could accomplish such a victory again, but I think there is significant reason to question whether or not the current management there can lead it to that place.