While Apple is grabbing all the headlines with its Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco, there is another little get together taking place on the other side of the country.

Microsoft’s TechEd North American conference kicked off yesterday with a wide ranging keynote session as it attempted to pitch its new services to various Fortune 500 companies. And whilst it may have lacked the “wow” factor associated with its rival Apple, it more than made up for it with some heavy positioning for Windows Azure, Windows Server 2012 and other associated products as it prepares to embrace what it’s calling the “era of cloud OS.”

Satya Nadella, President of Microsoft’s Server & Tools division, explained that businesses need operating systems and server tools that can deliver and support a wide range of web-enabled devices and applications more than ever.

The new requirements of organizations present “a huge opportunity to reinvent ourselves,” explained Nadella at the keynote, before giving various demos of Windows Azure, Windows Server, SQL Server 2012 and other new products.

Windows Server 2012, which is still in beta test mode, is essentially the same as previous Windows OSes, performing the critical tasks of hardware management and providing a platform for various applications. However, the scale of Server 2012 has multiplied considerably, and now takes on data center proportions, explained Nadella.

Along with Windows Azure – a cloud application development and hosting platform – Server 2012 has been designed in order to meet the requirements that applications must; (a) reside on the cloud, and (b), be made available simultaneously on various devices, while also offering social features.

Server 2012 and Windows Azure were the biggest highlights of yesterday’s keynote, yet Microsoft also introduced several smaller products, including a revamped Windows Intune, their popular mobile device and PC management tool, which now offers more features for managing mobile devices.

In addition, Microsoft revealed that their application development tool LightSwitch has been updated, and now renders HTML5, allowing developers to use the product to create applications for platforms and devices that support HTML5.

The company also gave journalists a sneak preview of its up-and-coming Microsoft Team Foundation Service, which offers a suite lifecycle management tools, and is designed to streamline the development and deployment of applications.