It’s no secret that Microsoft is dissatisfied with the reception of Windows 8, and to rectify that Redmond’s designers have been planning to introduce some big changes with the up-and-coming “Windows Blue” update later this year. Windows Blue is rumored to contain a number of new features, including extended menus in ‘Metro mode’ and the ability to boot ‘straight to desktop’, but could there be even more radical changes in the offing?

According to ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley, there almost certainly will be, though we won’t be seeing them in Windows Blue. Instead, Microsoft is believed to be working on a separate project, codenamed “Mohoro”, which would effectively deliver Windows 8 “as-a-service”, making the operating system accessible remotely over the net.

The concept of “Desktop-as-a-service” would mean that users will no longer need to install Windows directly on their PCs or tablets. Instead, they’ll just be able to open the OS in a browser or app window, and then get straight to work.

Foley describes Mohoro as the cloud-based version of “Remote App as a hosted service”, and says that it would likely appeal to companies looking to run legacy apps on new PCs and other devices. Doing so now is currently very difficult, only achievable by companies with their own servers. With Mohoro however, companies would be able to deploy their apps with just a few mouse clicks, using Windows Intune to configure them for each of the company’s devices, be they iPads, Android tablets or presumably, even something like a Chromebook.

The concept isn’t a new one, not entirely. Microsoft has been working with Citrix and other partners for years to offer its users remote access to their desktops through virtualization software. However the licensing of these services is extremely complex, and requires companies to have back-end access to their server infrastructure. Moreover, Microsoft refuses to allow its partners to offer a full version of Windows 7 as a service.

Mohoro, if its true, would therefore be the first attempt by Microsoft to offer this kind of service by itself, without getting its partners involved. For now, we don’t know anything about the specifics of how desktop-as-a-service might work in practice, though Foley says that we might hear more during Microsoft’s annual developer conference, Build, which takes place next month.