Rob Helm, director of research for Directions on Microsoft, notes that it is "possible," having previously heard of a secret OS project headed by former Microsoft Servers and Tools vice president Eric Rudder. He continues, saying that the project is most likely conceptual at this point, but of a more serious nature than ideas tossed about at Microsoft Research.

The need stems from a vastly different modern-day computing scenario: users are increasingly spreading their work among local and remote computing devices, as well as the Internet's considerably larger, and more public, presence.

Midori's focus will be on concurrency – multiple sources accessing a centrally hosted "cloud" of applications, documents and services. According to the report, Midori will make use of a technology known as Asynchronous Promise Architecture, which will efficiently distribute applications across nodes.

Midori will also feature a different programming model ideal for addressing state management, by migrating APIs, apps, and developers to a constrained model.

Microsoft will allegedly position Midori as an answer to Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, which is expected some time within the next year. Midori has not yet been slated for release,.