At Microsoft's (NASDAQ: MSFT) annual Financial Analyst Meeting last week, company executives put cloud computing at the center of their strategy going forward. While Microsoft has spent considerable time talking about the consumer side of things lately, enterprise customers made up 35.8 percent of its business, small and mid-sized companies made up 20.5 percent, and consumers accounted for 16.9 percent.

eWeek's Darryl Taft asks whether cloud computing has "awakened a sleeping giant" at the Redmond, Wash., company. The effort to push its business offerings onto cloud-based solutions is enabled by Microsoft's low-profile Server and Tools technologies. The Server and Tools unit, which is its third largest business at the company, "is beginning to challenge long-term cash cows such as Windows and Office in contributing to the Microsoft bottom line," Taft writes. Windows Azure, the company's "core cloud computing play," as well as BizTalk, Windows server and AppFabric, are part of the Server and Tools unit.

For the year ahead, Microsoft will focus on eight main areas, executives told analysts at the annual gathering: Xbox and TV, Bing, Office, Windows Server, Windows Phone, Windows, Business users and SQL Server.

In a post at ReadWriteWeb, Audrey Watters takes a look at one of Microsoft's recent converts to cloud computing, the University of Georgia, which is using the Live@edu service. The cloud-based offering provides the university with improved email storage, calendar options, online collaboration and document sharing tools, among other things. Educational institutions increasingly are migrating to cloud services to reduce costs and simplify their infrastructure.

For more:
- see Darryl Taft's article at eWeek
- see Audrey Watters' post at ReadWriteWeb

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