For years, Microsoft’s been wanting to release a “distributed-services” version of Windows, one in which the end user would not store applications or data on their individual computers, but would instead access them through an online framework.  This model, which is known in some circles as “cloud computing” apparently in the hopes the term will catch on, has since become acceptable thanks in large part to Google and its own suite of online apps, and is seen as an attractive alternative to increasingly bloated programs that dominate HD space that could be utilized for even more local file storage.  (To demonstrate how long Microsoft’s wanted in on this, it was originally going to be part and parcel of the .NET platform back around the start of this decade.)

Now comes word that there will soon be a new version of Windows that finally fulfills the promise of those pre-XP days.  Windows Azure, which is being targeted as a simultaneous release with the upcoming Windows 7 (the follow-up to Vista), will mark the Redmond giant’s first concentrated foray into the realm of cloud computing, an arena its “Live” apps have thus far had only lukewarm success in thanks to the inroads already established by Google.

What this means to the end user is that it will soon be possible to create and access any kind of file from any Internet-ready device in the world, and instead of carrying around portable storage devices and/or other media to transfer those files between machines via “sneakernet” protocol, you can just keep the files “in the cloud” (that is, on the remote server) and have them ready for you wherever, whenever.

It sounds good, of course; there are people that get paid more money than most of us see in a year to make it sound good, after all.  However, there’s also a bit of a dark cloud hanging over this initiative if you ask me, and that would be the conjoined-twin issues of privacy and security.  Knowing Microsoft and its predeliction towards keeping as much of an eye on its users as they legally and technologically can (don’t forget how often a Vista installation has to check in with the home office to make sure it’s still “legal”), do we have any reason not to believe they won’t be snooping around through user files to make sure nothing of dubious content is being stored on their “cloud?”  Although these sorts of “Big Brother”-esque outbursts of paranoia have been heard for years regarding… well, just about everything really, and thus far nothing even approaching 1984 has come to pass, maybe it’s just latent paranoia speaking to question something like that - to say nothing of the way people like me tend to look askew at anything Microsoft does as being of questionbable intent, simply because of who’s behind it.  So the issue is probably no issue at all, but I’m sure you’re going to be hearing otherwise in the coming days and weeks.

Windows Azure does sound like an interesting experiment, and is probably the first true “innovation” Windows has had in years (ignoring, of course, that Google already beat them to the clound-computing punch).  It’s something to keep an eye on, to be sure.

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