MICROSOFT IS staking its future on cloud computing and gambling that businesses all over the world will make the switch from inhouse computing to cyberspace.

At a five-day Washington summit for 14,000 partners this week, Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer said the industry was “at an inflection point in technology history” and predicted spending on cloud applications will grow five times faster than all other software spending.

Cloud computing enables companies to dispense with costly inhouse servers and run everything from e-mail to accounting and other complex computer services on the web with huge savings.

“There’s a great buzz here. It’s all about the cloud. Every second word is the cloud. Microsoft are 100 per cent with the cloud and they want all their partners to lead the way and help companies make this change,” said Hugh MacHale, of Dublin-based Itomic.

Mr McHale represented one of 74 Irish firms that flew into Washington for Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference to get the inside track on how they can work with Microsoft to develop professional applications.

Spanish Point Technologies, also based in Dublin, showcased applications it has already developed for Windows Azure – the MS cloud platform.

The Irish Music Rights Organisation (Imro) which collects royalties for musicians is one company using the technology. It created a system which allowed artists to log in and track payments at the end of a month, cutting computer costs dramatically for Imro.

“If they don’t use the system 20 days of the month, they’re not charged because the payments are made according to usage,” said Donal Cullen, founder of Spanish Point. In Washington, he launched another product, after Microsoft asked him to demonstrate at the summit. He hopes to leave with outline agreements to sell the product in France, Spain and Sweden, creating 10 jobs in Ireland.

Tradefacilitate, another Irish firm, got a boost after getting a name check in Ballmer’s keynote speech. “I was blown away. And sitting in the same theatre with 14,000 others and the MS CEO pointing to us alongside Accenture and Siemens was a good feeling,” said Conor O’Riordan whose background is imports and exports

He is already capitalising on new EU laws on paper-free customs which require all goods to carry a “passport” from January. Trade Facilitate has an EU- and US-approved application that allows import and export companies do all their paperwork on the cloud and pass customs quickly.

Mr O’Riordan launched the product in March after a two-year development and validation process, and already has 800 customers, including coffee suppliers in Ethiopia and wine producers all over the world. “This conference will have enormous impact on our business,” he said.

For Itomic, the conference was a vindication of its business strategy. Up until last year, it was a traditional hardware firm selling servers and maintaining them. “We thought if we started to migrate people to the cloud we could cannabilise our business, but . . . we have to do it because it is the right thing for business.

“The cloud is the single biggest thing to happen since the growth of the internet,” said Mr McHale.