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Live Mesh, currently undergoing closed testing, aims to enable users to access pictures, documents and other data scattered across the web from anywhere and at any time.

The internet becomes a data hub - a cloud to use the modern parlance - with Live Mesh synchronising files across computers, phones and other devices. The software will also let friends and colleagues collaborate and share documents more easily.

Initially the program will be limited

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to 10,000 US Windows users, but Microsoft said it plans to extend Live Mesh over the next few months to mobile phones, Macs and other devices connected to the internet.

Analysts say the product may signal a watershed moment within Microsoft to embrace a technology that the company viewed as a threat in the past.

"We may be seeing signs of a Microsoft that is newly focused," says Jonathan Yarmis, a vice president and analyst at AMR Research. "This is exciting because it has as much to do with who is doing it as what Microsoft is doing."

Jupiter Research's Michael Gartenberg said that Microsoft has identified a huge opportunity.

"I've said before that whoever controls the sync point for content between screens and devices is going be a big winner. Live Mesh has nailed the vision, the challenge is how quickly they can implement this into something real and how many platforms beyond those that Microsoft offers directly they can embrace."

Microsoft plans a wider, public beta of Live Mesh before then end of this year.