Another new Window Live buzzword is born

There's a new Windows Live buzzword in town: Windows Live Cloud Infrastructure.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer mentioned publicly the elusive Windows Live Cloud Infrastructure during his remarks at Microsoft's Financial Analyst Meeting (FAM) on July 26 in Redmond.

Microsoft has been bucketing and rebucketing its collection of Live services for months, in an attempt to explain succinctly where Microsoft is playing in the online services space. Ballmer divided up its services offerings into four groups:

Personal services: Windows Live, Office Live, Popfly, MSN, Live Search

Developer services: Windows Live Cloud Infrastructure services; Silverlight Streaming, BizTalk Services

Business services: Exchange Hosted Services, managed communications and collaboration, Office Live Small Business, CRM Live and accompanying Titan development platform

Service enablers: Windows Server, SQL Server, Visual Studio, adCenter, click-to-run client (ActiveX, Ajax, Silverlight, .Net and Win32 Softgrid for streaming apps on Windows XP)

Cloud Infrastructure Services recently got a new chief at the start of Microsoft's fiscal 2008. Amitabh Srivasta, a former Core Operating System Division (COSD) leader and Microsoft Technical Fellow, is the new Corporate Vice President in charge of Cloud Infrastructure Services, according to Microsoft's Web site.

Microsoft has been working on what's been known as Windows Live Core. There's a back end component -- the infrastructure needed to manage and host Microsoft's various Live services across its growing farms of datacenters. But there's also some kind of a front-end Live Core component that will allow users to make use of a consistent user experience whether they are on the Web, on a device, or on a PC.

Microsoft Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie is expected to shed a bit more light on exactly what these infrastructure services are during FAM later today.