Apple job ad confirms cloud is on the agenda

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Speculation about Apple's plans for the cloud was already rife, but now a job ad has the rumour mill in overdrive.

In the strongest indication yet that Apple is busily developing cloud services beyond its existing MobileMe offering, the company has advertised for a "cloud systems engineer."

The advertisement is for a full-time position at the company's Cupertino facility and asked for an engineer who "has built high-performance, scalable and extensible systems" to join the "team building the future of cloud services at Apple".

In true Apple style, the advert is low on detail, giving no indication of what kind of cloud services the company is developing. It does, however, indicate the ideal candidate will collaborate with other engineering teams at Apple to build the platform frameworks and systems that will power the company's next generation web services.

There has long been speculation Apple will release an enhanced version of MobileMe, incorporating cloud storage for music, photos and video. It has also been rumoured the company is developing a product similar to Amazon's Cloud Drive, which will allow customers to stream music.