Microsoft's Windows 8 Direction Suggested by Job Postings

I understand why Microsoft would be reluctant to share too much about its development plans for Windows 8. After all, Windows 7 continues to sell at a steady clip (Microsoft claims 240 million licenses since the operating system's Oct. 2009 launch), and there's always the fear that officially announcing the next version will dissuade some XP and Vista holdouts from upgrading.

Nonetheless, Windows 8 rumors continue to percolate. Within the blogosphere, a 2012 release for the next-generation operating system seems the consensus. The scuttlebutt also suggests that, in keeping with Microsoft's widely touted "all in" strategy, Windows 8 will be tightly integrated with Web applications and content.

Microsoft itself may be publicly tight-lipped about Windows 8. But two new job postings on the company's Website suggest the company's actively searching for people to help build it. Both those postings have now been yanked from Microsoft's Careers Website, but blogs such as Winrumors and Windows8news have reproduced the copy in full; simply because I haven't seen these on Microsoft's Website with my own eyes (although I have no reason to distrust either of those fine blogs), take the following with a hefty grain of salt.

The first job posting seeks a Software Development Engineer who can help with work "on a Windows Azure-based service and integrating with certain Microsoft online services and Windows 8 client backup."

The second is looking for a Windows System Engineer to "play a pivotal role as we integrate our online services with Windows 8."

During the summer, an alleged internal slide deck suggested that the cloud would indeed play a big part in Windows 8. On June 26, a Website called Microsoft Journal (which soon disappeared from its Windows Live Spaces host site) posted the deck, dated April 2010, detailing Microsoft's discussions about the operating system. The features supposedly under consideration included ultra-fast booting, a "Microsoft Store" for downloading apps, fuller cloud integration, and the use of facial recognition for logins.

"Windows accounts could be connected to the cloud," read one of the slides, which followed that with a bullet point: "Roaming settings and preferences associated with a user between PCs and devices."

During a discussion at October's Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2010 in Orlando, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer suggested "the next release of Windows" posed the company's riskiest bet. Although the desktop-based Windows franchise continues to sell well, thinkers such as departing Microsoft Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie believe the future lies in devices connected to the cloud--devices that take forms beyond traditional desktops and laptops.

"At this juncture, given all that has transpired in computing and communications, it's important that all of us do precisely what our competitors and customers will ultimately do: close our eyes and form a realistic picture of what a post-PC world might actually look like," Ozzie wrote in an Oct. 28 posting on his personal blog, days after the company announced his resignation.

If these job postings prove accurate, it's yet another small bit of evidence that Microsoft's trying to apply its "all in" cloud strategy to Windows. Personally, I'm wondering just how the company will walk that tightrope between the operating system's traditional desktop emphasis and the cloud paradigm. I guess we'll find out the answer in a few years.

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