Microsoft’s Business Productivity Online Services — the suite of software that includes Exchange, Sharepoint, Office products, also known as BPOS — is an easily understandable example of cloud computing. It’s a per-month-per-user charge for what used to come on CD-ROMs with license fees, with all the applications and documents now hosted by Micrsoft data centers.

Microsoft has made billion-dollar investments around the world and has reduced the overhead it takes to offer these services through scale. Integrated and migrated by CSC, the BPOS solution provides an amazing opportunity and value for our enterprise clients who are beginning to discover the benefits of cloud computing.

There has been a large increase in interest in these BPOS services — and we starting our first major roll out with the Royal Mail Group in the UK. Numerous Fortune 500-size organizations are strongly considering BPOS as it provides a more cost-effective way to run and maintain advanced messaging and collaboration services for their companies. I think we’ll actually see an acceleration of adoption of these types of cloud services in the near term.

Jay Noble is Director of Cloud Computing at CSC. Follow Jay on Twitter @CSCTrustedCloud