Worldwide Developers Conference

Apple announced yesterday that it plans to reveal its first major foray into "cloud" computing on Monday, a shot across Amazon’s bow and a rare move for a company that on the whole keeps its cards closer to the vest.

Steve Jobs and a team of Apple execs will kick off the company’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference by showing off the iCloud, an Internet-based data-storage service, and two of its latest operating systems, iOS 5 for mobile devices and Mac OS Lion.

The release of these three products

"I think that Apple’s announcement of these three products indicates that Apple intends to synchronize the release of these three products," said Carl Howe, analyst at the Yankee Group. "It’s likely that iCloud may require iTunes running in accordance with Lion on Macs to have the proper synchronization of music to the cloud."

Apple faces serious competition from Amazon, which launched a flurry of cloud services in March. Previously this month, Google Music was announced, which permits users to store 20,000 songs for free. Both services let you upload content from Apple’s iTunes to their cloud servers.