Microsoft Windows Azure and the company's Online Services pose a real challenge to Google in enterprise applications, according to one analyst. Another argues that Google's native Web position makes it the stronger candidate to pursue business with SAAS and Web services. What cloud computing camp are you in?

The announcement alone of Microsoft's Windows Azure platform a month ago was enough to shift the mindshare in cloud computing from the Googleplex in Mountain View to the behemoth in Redmond, Wash.

That much is clear in talking to some software analysts after Microsoft Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie dropped the Azure bomb on the audience at PDC in Los Angeles. The company then layered on the cloud theme with the broad launch of Microsoft Exchange Online and SharePoint Online Nov. 17 in San Francisco, essentially in Google's backyard.

Azure is essentially vaporware, a community technical preview that could change drastically when and if it arrives in 2009.

Yet Azure could give Microsoft the edge in cloud computing it needs over Google, which has wiped the floor with Microsoft in SAAS (software as a service) to this point, according to Enterprise Applications Consulting analyst Josh Greenbaum. 

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