Even though the first test version of 'Windows 8' is expected to be released next year, there are very few clues as to what Microsoft has in store for its flagship OS. Will it be an iterative release, building on the success of Windows 7, or a radical redesign that takes the company in a completely different direction?
The latest leaked slides suggest that it might be firmly in the latter category. According to a presentation obtained by ma-config and found by ZDNet's Mary-Jo Foley, the next version of Windows could be moving up into the cloud.
The presentation shows how current generation operating systems - with the help of Microsoft's App-V - can virtualise user data, user settings and applications. With the next release - labelled as Windows Next and scheduled for release in or around 2012 - it will also become possible to virtualise the entire operating system. This would obviously allow all of the software to be run and hosted away from the host machine, making the platform almost entirely hardware independent and eliminating a lot of compatibility issues.
Moving an entire OS into the cloud like this is a fairly novel approach, especially for Microsoft. If this turns out to be the direction that the company is taking, it could completely change the face of enterprise IT infrastructures. Obviously it isn't clear if this platform would be targeted towards corporate users where companies could host a private cloud or data-centre, or if it would be an integral part of the consumer OS, with Microsoft taking care of the hosting. Either way, it could see the company starting to offer its operating system as a service, rather than a retail product.
Of course, these are all pretty big ifs. This presentation was from April of this year, meaning that an awful lot could change between then and the operating system's eventual release. Nonetheless, it's perfectly possible that Microsoft is planning a radical overhaul to the Windows family, and with the company's focus on cloud computing, this doesn't seem too far fetched.
