August 9th, 2007
A (Microsoft) Code Name a Day: Cosmos
I’m resuming my Microsoft Code Name a Day series that I started in December 2006. The goal: To provide the back story, each day in August, on one of Microsoft’s myriad code names. Some of these code names might be familiar to Microsoft watchers; others (hopefully) will be brand-new.
Microsoft code namesoffer some great clues about the Redmondians’ development priorities, not to mention a better understanding of which future Microsoft products fit together, from a strategy standpoint. And not every product group is moving to boring, numbered codenames (like Windows 7 and Office 14).
Without further ado, let the codename games begin.
Microsoft
code name
of the day:
Cosmos
Microsoft code name of the day: Cosmos
Best guess on what it is: The new and improved storage/processing framework for Live Search
Meaning/context of the code name: Given “Cosmos” is synonymous with “an orderly and systematic universe,” the Cosmos team must have some big things on its plate. I’m figuring the Cosmos name also might have some synergies with Microsoft’s Blue/Cloud hosted database/query effort. (Cosmos…blue sky…cloud….maybe?)
Back story: Live Search already draws on petabytes of data on thousands of servers in Microsoft’s various datacenters. The Live Search team is planning to scale up this back-end infrastructure to encompass more data, machines and users in a distributed environment. Cosmos is a component of Microsoft’s scale-out plan, I hear.
Additional info: Microsoft has said it plans to offer the Live Search programming interfaces to other developers so they can incorporate the Live Search service into their applications and environments. Cosmos will supposedly aid in this effort as well, by enforcing unified programming constructs, sources say.
Got a Microsoft code name you’ve been wondering about? Send it my way and I’ll do my best to track down some leads on what it might be.
And if you want to keep track of the full month’s worth of Microsoft code names I end up posting, bookmark this “Microsoft Codenames” page. You can also check out this video-whiteboard I did recently on Microsoft codenames.
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