No one listening to Microsoft COO Kevin Turner this week could be in any doubt: Microsoft is headed for The Cloud. For the past seven months the company has quietly been orchestrating its technical efforts to the music of a new mission, that of helping its customers and users to "Create experiences that combine the magic of software with the power of Internet services across a world of devices." And part of its massive $8BN R&D budget (the largest in the industry, according to Turner) is being allocated to helping unlock the possibilities of cloud computing via virtualization technology.

Hard on the heels of the news in August that Microsoft's "Cloud Platform vision" was coming together as part of its overall Software plus Services strategy, Turner's remarks - made at at the Microsoft Virtualization Launch yesterday in Bellevue, Wash. - included the observations that "some hybrid of software plus services is what we believe" and that in the coming year "we're going to spend about $8 billion in research and development."