News

Windows 8: Microsoft Seeks Help on New OS

Microsoft has been looking to fill jobs associated with Windows 8, its next operating system beyond the current Windows 7 beta.

• By Kurt Mackie
• April 22, 2009

Two job postings have been spotted, as noted by the CodenameWindows blog last week and by others on the Web. While it's no surprise that Microsoft has been working on Windows 8, public references to it have been few and far between.

One of Microsoft's Windows 8 job posts is for a lead development engineer in software testing.

"For the upcoming version of Windows, new critical features are being worked on including cluster support and support for one way replication," the job post reads. "The core engine is also being reworked to provide dramatic performance improvements. We will also soon be starting major improvements for Windows 8 where we will be including innovative features which will revolutionize file access in branch offices."

The reference to "file access in branch offices" sounds a lot like Microsoft's upcoming BranchCache technology. Windows 7 Enterprise edition and Windows Server 2008 R2 both will feature BranchCache, which is designed to improve application responsiveness across an organization's branch offices via a wide area network connection.

The second Windows 8 job posting is for a software development engineer specializing in test who will specifically work "on the next version of the file server."

"As the team moved to Windows 8, you will have 2 main responsibilities - (i) put on the customer/design critique hat as we plan our next version file server management experience (i) participating in the architectural design, and development and driving automated testing for managing the next generation file server," the job post explains.

Microsoft has been hinting at a Windows 7 release candidate appearing in May of this year. As for Windows 8, veteran Microsoft watcher Mary-Jo Foley offered a guess on the release schedule. Foley wrote in her blog that "Windows 8 will be released around 2011 (with Microsoft publicly promising a 2012 delivery target)."

Windows 8 will not be based on futuristic concepts, such as Microsoft's incubation project for a more modular operating system, code-named "Midori," according to Foley. It'll be based on the same "old" Windows 7 code.

Meanwhile, at least one Microsoft blogger pointed to a concept design as her best guess for how Windows 8 might look.