Now you can get your head in clouds at Amazon and or Microsoft  for free. As with anything labeled as free be sure to read the fine print and ask questions of the organization providing those free services.

Amazon is offering new customers a free Amazon EC2 Micro Instance for a year using their Amazon Web Services (AWS). http://aws.amazon.com/free/.

Microsoft is offering new customers an Extra Small Windows Azure instance free through September 30th, 2011 using their Windows Azure service. http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/free-trial/

The best way to try out these services is to have a task/project you want to complete. Typically this will be a basic web site. Amazon provides both Linux and Windows services whereas Microsoft is strictly Windows. If you plan on using Open Source software like WordPress or Drupal I suggest using Amazon Linux based servers which run Open Source without the extra tweaking required with Windows. On the other hand if you need to use ASP.Net and or MS SQL, then go with Azure.

Be smart – As soon as you get something setup be sure to know how to check the resources you have used to avoid going over the limits of the free services and paying for over limit charges.

Be really smart – Once you get up always include in your long term plans some form of web site/server and database backup in the event there is a major outage. Both companies will warn you they are not perfect. The recent Amazon Cloud crash exposed those companies who were not smart in their deployment. If you are serious about running a business always have some Business Continuity Plan.

The cloud is here to stay. With the announcement of Apple's iCloud service you can see the big players are there. Expect to see a lot businesses moving a lot of data and services to the cloud. Play now free with AWS and or Azure to keep up. Avoid being that deer in the headlights when something bad happens to your cloud presence. Have a backup plan. Then be sure to test the backup plan.