I was just going through the old transcripts dated 27th May,2010 of Steve Ballmer here and found some interesting things regarding the next version of Windows.
First of all Ballmer clearly says that the Windows and IE will together embrace the cloud which clearly supports our previous post regarding Windows 8 to be a cloud based OS. Here is the part of the transcript-
And that’s why this notion of the so-called cloud is so important. The cloud really is a buzzword more than anything, it’s not a thing. The cloud is not the Internet, the cloud is not some one Microsoft product or competitive product. The cloud is a new model for computing. It’s a new model for computing that brings together the best of rich clients with the best of the Internet. It brings together the best of the enterprise data centers with the best of the Internet. It is a phenomenon that all products will need to take advantage of. Windows and IE will fuse together and embrace the cloud. Office, we’re embracing the cloud. Windows Server through Windows Azure, embraces the cloud and so on and so forth.
Ballmer further add that they are working hard on Internet Explorer 9 and next version of Windows. We have already seen the preview builds of IE 9,but (codename) Windows 8 is nowhere in scene-
We’re in a year in which we’re shipping a lot of exciting new products. Windows 7 really hit the market well. We’re hard at work in Internet Explorer 9 and on the next version of Windows. We’re launching Office 2010, and the number of new things that we can enable in our customers, whether it’s a consumer or small business, on up to a mid-sized and large business with Office 2010, SharePoint, Exchange is really quite remarkable.

http://windows8beta.com/2010/06/stev...-8-development