Microsoft seems to have suddenly realized that people like to be able to back up their mobile devices, even if they aren’t part of a corporate managed environment.  To that end they’ve released Microsoft Phone Data Manager (Beta).  The tool allows for contacts, music, pictures and video to be backed up off the device into your Windows Live account in their cloud computing efforts.

The tool depends on linking the mobile device to a computer for connecting to the Cloud, so it isn’t all that great.  But at least they’ve come up with something that passes for a legitimate use of the “cloud computing” moniker that they’ve been touting recently.

They support a number of devices beyond just Windows Mobile-powered options, which is nice.  Ironically the WinMo devices are only supported via a USB cable, while non-WinMo devices also have BlueTooth support.  A full list of known supported (and some unsupported ones) are contained here.