Microsoft is steadily taking us towards a new form of operating environment that will use virtualisation techniques to provide users with much more freedom, flexibility and portability.

The speculation over what comes next after Windows has been almost constant over the last decade, but Microsoft’s operating system remains dominant both on the desktop and the server. Microsoft has now started to enter that debate and has been letting the world know what it plans to put forward as the next generation interface for everyday computing.

The Midori project might sound familiar in terms of its overall concept. It aims to decouple software and applications from the hardware that it runs on. The idea of making software independent of the operating system is not new and nor is Midori, which is, basically a ‘componentised’ operating system designed to interface with the Internet. This is an idea Microsoft has been playing with for a while, because it knows that the days of Windows will, at some point, be numbered, because it won’t be able to cope with the demands users will place on technology in the future.

The core issue here is mobility and the use of multiple devices. Windows is great when you are only using one device, but if you want to use different devices at different times and in different places, you need more flexibility and less dependency on carrying the whole system around with you. If you can virtualise the environments and applications, you can eliminate issues around software licensing and management, access security and compatibility.

In Vista and Mobile Today

While these are very early days and the world is not going to change overnight, it seems inevitable that this is the way operating systems will go. Microsoft has already started to build some of this kind of functionality into its operating systems. Using Windows Vista and Windows Mobile for example, it is already possible to view information on any kind of device. Outlook can be used across the web to access messaging and scheduling information.

Microsoft has also introduced Live Mesh – a system that enables you to view your information from any PC. This is available simply by signing up through the Live Desktop site and provides a strong indication of the kind of world Microsoft may be envisioning in the future. (You can find out more at www.mesh.com).

Whilst the exact route and length of the roadmap that will take us into the Midori era is not yet clear, it is being steadily mapped out. Microsoft will of course, want to be in the vanguard of the move towards this more virtual world and will undoubtedly want to take its partners and customers with it.

Lightweight and Portable

The operating systems that are very much smaller and more adaptable than Windows” is today. What Microsoft is moving towards now is a much more lightweight and portable operating system that can be swiftly adapted for use with a wide range of applications. According to the reports, Microsoft is writing Midori from the ground up, so this is a completely different beast to Windows.

The Midori code is designed to run directly on native hardware (x86, x64 and ARM) and hosted on the Windows Hyper-V hypervisor, or even possibly by a Windows process. Microsoft will try to make Midori applications co-exist and interoperate with existing Windows applications in the first instance, but ultimately, Midori or something like it is the future.

Much of the focus in Midori will be on providing concurrent operation, both for distributed and local applications. It will make use of local processing and memory resources, using dynamic allocation and a data-driven application model. It will be assumed that applications could be run on a wide variety of devices and using different topologies – client/server, multi-tier, peer-to-peer, or in the cloud.

Completely Virtual

The capability to tolerate disconnections and interruptions in connections will be built in and the way that application components and data can be stored and retrieved will, in effect, be completely virtual. Applications components could reside in many different places, data stored in any available location – all of which would be seamless to the user.

A high-level application model that abstracts details of physical machines and processors, called the Asynchronous Promise Architecture, will be key in Midori. There will of course, be a whole new set of programming models and APis and applications will need to be completely re-written to take advantage of the new architecture which will, in effect, make multiple threads available.

While much of the core programming will use .NET languages, this new framework will mean a lot of new learning for the developer community and will raise the bar as far as expertise is concerned. In the early days at least, you will really need to know what you are doing. It is, however, some way off just yet.