Microsoft will soon release 'Windows Cloud' OS
By dhan, 01 October 2008 - 19:40 24 comments
Microsoft Corp. CEO Steve Ballmer revealed a few details on Wednesday of a forthcoming operating system that will help developers write Internet-based applications.
Within a month, Microsoft will unveil what Ballmer called "Windows Cloud." The operating system, which will likely have a different name, is intended for developers writing cloud-computing applications, said Ballmer, who spoke to an auditorium of IT managers at a Microsoft-sponsored conference in London.
Ballmer was short on details, saying more information would spoil the announcement. Windows Cloud is a separate project from Windows 7, the operating system that Microsoft is developing to succeed Windows Vista.
Comments (24)
este - 01 October 2008 - 19:53
Anymore details released about this new OS?
PeterF - 01 October 2008 - 22:08
Singularity
+Northgrove - 02 October 2008 - 07:51
Huh? Who's saying this is that research project?
PeterF - 02 October 2008 - 09:03
now that I've read more about this it seems more like a web based platform. I was wrong to asume this was Singularity.
SerbInside - 01 October 2008 - 20:01
I honestly hope they aren't starting more projects than they can handle...
offroadaaron - 02 October 2008 - 02:18
haven't they pretty much done that already.
Soldiers33 - 01 October 2008 - 20:19
if its all gonna be server based then, wudnt mean it will run slow as hell for people with slow internet?
jameswjrose - 01 October 2008 - 20:36
As a Windows developer for 15 years I've been reluctant to get into web based development because of that very issue. At this moment in time Windows apps can do more, and can be speedier than their web based brethren because of net speeds. Downloading the presentation layer and the data layer is a pain. Ajax does help this.
In 1997 someone I knew was part of a project to create a data line from Wash DC to Silicon Valley/Sunnyvale. That line, at the start, was capable of handling 1GB per second. That was also only 1/10th of it's future ability.
So web strong and dynamic apps are coming, I believe in the next 10+ years we'll see real action on that front.
If MS makes an client and server OS that allows the seamless use of distributed applications that will be a good thing. There are a collection of huddles that will have to take place, and not all applications will be good on the web/cloud (think video editing. That's a LOT of data to move around) however Excel, Word and may business standard applications already exist on the web (Google) and work well.
The issue about web/cloud apps is really about trust. Do you trust MS, Google, Sun etc with your data? Can your data move around the net exposed? Or will everything need to be encrypted?
Interesting.
Peace,
James Rose
New York City
bits - 02 October 2008 - 10:22
Im confused where you are going there. 1GB is a tiny link. Sort of like a billion dollars is not a lot of money to the US government. It is all scaling numbers.
Australia has 2x480gigabit capacity(2x860gigabit by end of 2008.) on SCC(AUS-US) and another 240gigabit AJCable(AUS-JAP, current design capacity of 1 terabit). PPC-1(AUS-Guam) when completed will have 1.92terabits capacity. Then there are other cables which only offer 10gigabit etc and are not noteworthy. All those are over FAR greater distances. And those numbers seem like a 56k connection compared to the current links between America, Europe and Japan.
Sure web apps are coming but it's not because your friend worked on a cable which is likely redundant and decommissioned long ago.
jameswjrose - 02 October 2008 - 13:54
Not one gigabit, one gigabyte. (hence the capitalized GB)
And even that is smallish... but the ability to move a DVD coast to coast in 4 seconds is a big deal, especially since that was 11 years ago.
But my point is that larger networks are coming, the throughput is getting larger and therefore moving larger amounts of data, which is required for web apps, will become more probable.
Peace,
James
Marshalus - 01 October 2008 - 21:08
It's called Live Mesh... I will bet you that is the cloud platform they're talking about. I think they've stated that their eventual goal with that is to allow third parties to build applications on top of it.
BigBoy - 01 October 2008 - 21:23
Nope, it's not Live Mesh. Live Mesh is Live Mesh. This is something else.
+metal_dragen - 02 October 2008 - 00:36
Yea, it's not Mesh. Mesh is going to be the platform for the Live family of apps in the future, plus eventually 3rd party apps as well.
wrack - 02 October 2008 - 00:00
These projects are based on Microsoft Research. They have totally independent resources than their normal working opertaions so there is no problem of them not being able to handle them.
+Northgrove - 02 October 2008 - 07:54
Unless MS spend too much funding on their research division - the money has to come from somewhere
Izlude - 02 October 2008 - 03:02
is this similar to what ghost is? i don't think i can quite comprehend what exactly this is all about.
booka - 02 October 2008 - 04:04
This all sounds kind of odd, but it'll be something interesting to see nonetheless. I'm guessing they are going to reveal it at the PDC 2008. Pretty cool how they are going to have 'two' Operating Systems debuting in one event. It'll be awesome if "Windows Cloud" would be something an average person could be able to use...
RAID 0 - 02 October 2008 - 05:49
I'm not really keen on Internet apps, let alone a OS that's not on my computer. :ponder:
Eros - 02 October 2008 - 09:37
So what is Windows Cloud? It's an operating system designed for developers who want to write applications for cloud-computing. In other words, web applications like Gmail, Hotmail, Zoho Office, or Windows Live Maps. It could lead to a growth in the number of web-based applications available. But without knowing more about the software or even how it's supposed to work, it's tough to make any real predictions.
este - 02 October 2008 - 12:53
Thats exactly what I was trying to get at with post #1 up top. Give it some time maybe...