Apple has launched an anticipated series of cloud-based services called iCloud at this week’s World Wide Developers Conference in San Francisco.

The company said in a news release it was ready to ramp the cloud services up in its three data centers, including the newest US$1bn facility in Maiden, North Carolina. The other two sites are in Newark, California, and, reportedly, in Santa Clara, California.

According to earlier reports, Apple has 107,000 sq ft of data center floor in Newark. In May, Data Center Knowledge reported that the company had leased an 11,000-sq-ft suite at a DuPont Fabros data center in Santa Clara.

The company said it invested more than $500m in the Maiden data center specifically to support the demand it expected iCloud to create.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs said in a statement that the new iCloud offering was an attempt to address the hassle of keeping all user information and content up to date across all devices.

“iCloud keeps your important information and content up to date across all your devices,” he said. “All of this happens automatically and wirelessly, and because it’s integrated into our apps you don’t even need to think about it’it all just works.”

iCloud stores all user content online, making it available seamlessly across multiple devices, including iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Mac and PC. Once new content is downloaded or existing content is updated, the changes are pushed to all devices.

Six services are under the iCloud umbrella. They are MobileMe, App Store and iBookstore, iCloud Backup, iCloud Storage, Photo Stream and iTunes. The portfolio is partially available today, with the rest expected to become available in the near future.