“Three screens and a cloud.”

That’s how both Chief Software Ray Ozzie and CEO Steve Ballmer repeatedly described the future of computing in general over this past year.

Inside Microsoft’s crystal ball, traditional desktop computing decreases as applications move up into the internet, and a new generation of lightweight ‘screens’ (thin clients, mobile devices, and network-enabled televisions) becomes the three prevailing client-side hardware models.

It’s a good little slogan – and about as unambiguous an endorsement of the conventional wisdom on the bright future of cloud computing as one could imagine.

Microsoft has had its share of advertising/PR missteps over the last few years – but it would be a shame if the Microsoft Azure initiative doesn’t end up garnering the media buzz it deserves, because the company is every bit as dedicated to the cloud as the above quote would suggest – and they’re putting their money where Ray’s and Steve’s mouths are.

Consider the Chicago data center (pictured at left), part of the massive global build-out of the Azure infrastructure that occurred over the past year.  Completed this past June, the facility occupies 700,000 sq. ft. – the size of 12 US football fields.  To populate a data center this size, 40 ft. shipping containers are packed full of servers and installed as power-efficient and easier-cooling modules (memo toMicrosoft’s PR people: that would make some pretty servicable B-roll news segment footage).

Sadly, though, so far the remarkable physical build-out of Azure has been one of the more overlooked stories of 2009, and as the service is poised to go live for the enterprise tomorrow on New Years Day, there remains relatively little coverage in the general or trade media.

So what is Azure?

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