Looking for growth in new markets where it is increasingly being bypassed, Microsoft plans late next year to start offering a new “cloud” operating system that would manage the relationship within software inside the computer and on the Web, where info and services are becoming increasingly centralized.

The company needs a new kind of operating system for a new computing world populated not by a one style of desktop computer but instead by dozens of different kinds of Internet-connected

appliances ranging from smartphones to mini-laptops called netbooks.

More of those devices use programs that reside on a remote server rather than on the device itself. The servers, in the so-called cloud, deliver what are called Web services, which can be anything from customer relationship software or a Facebook game.

Microsoft is a late entrant into a market that is crowded by a range of players offering every flavor of cloud computing, […]

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