LA may be bathed in warm sunshine, but here at the city’s Sheraton Hotel things are very cloudy indeed. It’s only the preview day of Microsoft Professional Developers Conference, but I’ve already lost count of the amount of times I’ve heard the phrase “cloud computing”.

Tomorrow’s keynote speech by chief software architect Ray Ozzie (pictured) is being trailed with the tagline “cloud computing takes centre stage”, and we’ve been promised in-depth briefings on the Midori/Cloud/Strata (pick your own Microsoft codename) operating system tomorrow.

Yet, even before Ozzie’s curtain-raiser, Microsoft’s staff are already talking up the company’s cloud-computing vision. Group product manager David Appel has already tried to put clear daylight between Microsoft and Google, insisting that consumers and companies want to take their pick of applications to run in the cloud, and those they want to use on their own PCs. The implication was clear: Google may well have a vast repertoire of online services, but it hasn’t got the desktop software to match – no matter what clever tricks it can pull with offline access in Google Gears.

Has Microsoft got a bevy of online services up its sleeve? We’re about to find out.