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Software major microsoft is planning to enter the area of cloud computing in a big way. This week, it will offer free software enabling those using Windows operating systems to connect with Windows Live services in the Web.

Cloud computing is geek lingo for virtual desktops which can be accessed from anywhere. Mictosoft which sells desktop software, has identified it as a major threat of the future. With companies such as Google offering storage facilities in the Web, MS obviously cannot fall behind.

It has already launched a Skydrive service which offers Hotmail users storage of up to 500 MB. MS does not want to lose customers to Google and others and is aiming to build up a model which will integrate desktop software with interent services.

A judge ruled on Monday that Microsoft doesn’t have to pay Alcatel-Lucent $1.5 billion, overturning a jury verdict that promised to shake up the digital music industry.

US Senior District Court Judge Rudi Brewster sided of a verdict in a lawsuit field against the US software giant by the French firm. Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith said that ruling by the judge reversing the jury’s $1.52 billion verdict against Microsoft was a victory for consumers of digital music and a triumph for common sense in the patent system.

The trail that ended in US District Court in San Diego in February centred on MP3 audio technology used in the Windows Media Player. Alcatel-Lucent argued that technology used to encode and decode digitalaudio files in Media Player infringed of two of its patents. Microsoft said that it had paid Munich-based Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft $16 million to legally use the disputed MP3 technology.

In his ruling, Mr.Brewster concluded that the US software giant did not infringe on one of the patents and that Fraunhofer would need to join Alcatel-Lucent’s infringement suit for it to be valid in court.

The fight between world’s biggest IT companies - Microsoft and IBM-Sun Microsystems combine has landed on Indian shores. India faces a deadline to vote for making Microsoft promoted Open Office Extensible Markup Language (OOXML) as an ISO standard for electronic documents or not along with 234 other countries, But the Bureau of Indian standards (BIS), which has to submit a vote on India’s behalf seems clueless, despite just less than a month to go for the deadline. Microsoft and rival ODF (Open Document Format) alliance lead by IBM & Sun Microsystems are hurling accusations over each other.

Jaijit Bhattacharya, country director, government strategy, Sun Microsystems said that about 160 technical issues had been identified with OOXML and did not seem to address its design goals. He said that no Indian organisation or institution was involved in the development of OOXML. He added that they did not see any standalone implementations of OOXML by an Indian firm unlike the ISO ODF standard.

A meeting has been called by the government in which members of both parties will meet. Microsoft India’s national technology offer Vijay Kapur counters Sun. He said OOXML was a completely open standard and its specifications were fully documented. He said there was no royalty charged and it works on a covenant of not to sue. He also said it did not recource to any proprietary information held by Microsoft.

ODF advocate IIT-Delhi assistant Prof P.Vigneshwara Ilavarasan clarifies the issue that the politics behind the battle was clear. Microsoft wanted to retain its hold over 95% market share in word processing documents in the garb of OOXML, but Sun Microsystems and IBM wanted to grab a pie of it and prevent Microsoft in its plans, he added.