Though late to the game, Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) wants to bring high-performance computing to its Windows Azure platform. The vision was outlined by Bob Muglia, President, Server & Tools Business in a blog post, who unveiled Microsoft's Technical Computing initiative early this week.

In a blog post, Muglia wrote that, "Our goal is to unleash the power of pervasive, accurate, real-time modeling to help people and organizations achieve their objectives and realize their potential."

In a nutshell, Microsoft is bringing burst- and cluster-computing capability to its cloud platform in order to support technical computing, another word for supercomputing. As part of this initiative, the software giant also wants to make it easier to write parallel code, as well as develop new tools and software needed for data-intensive tasks on its cloud platform.

In a telephone interview with CNET News, Microsoft general manager Bill Hilf highlighted the company's belief that technical computing is going to be the "killer app" where the cloud is concerned. The reason, Hilf explained, is that "they gobble up compute power. They need huge amounts of data."

Microsoft has already invested significant efforts into this initiative; CNET reported that the effort includes putting together a team of about 500 dedicated staff that has come together over the past 18 months.

Ultimately, the move to the clouds could mean tremendous cost savings for those who require high-performance computing.

For more on this story:
- check out this article at CNET News
- check out this article at InformationWeek 

Related Articles:
Microsoft looking for customers to test Cloud-based database replication
Microsoft means business with Azure
EMC unveils its cloud offering
Microsoft launches into the clouds with Windows Azure