Microsoft is working on a web-based operating system called Midori, as it looks to life beyond the Windows Operating system.

Midori is a distributed operating system that appears, in part, to contain elements of Microsoft’s failed ‘Cairo’ and WinFS projects.

In fact, Midori is expected to be a cloud-computing service, and so not as dependent on hardware as current generations of Windows.

The operating system is also expected to run with a virtualisation layer between the hardware and the OS, and is expected to be a commercial offshoot of the Singularity research project which Microsoft has been working on since 2003.

Previously the company had denied that the project was intended for commercial release.