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Microsoft code names offer 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: Avalanche

Best guess on what it is: Microsoft Secure Content Downloader (MSCD)

Meaning/context of the code name: Avalanche had a rocky start back in 2005, when it was a Microsoft research project that many dubbed Redmond’s BitTorrent killer. I guess the P2P file sharing was poised to set off a cascading avalanche of secure file downloads?

Back story: MSCD is “a peer-assisted” download manager capable of securely downloading specific files. The target audience is consumers who are downloading from a home PC, or business users whose computers are not behind a corporate firewall.

Microsoft’s more detailed description: “MSCD allows authorized content publishers to distribute their content to a large audience via file swarming. The publisher can choose to use MSCD to augment their existing server bandwidth, or use it to enable them to reach a much larger audience than they could have otherwise with a relatively small server investment. MSCD is NOT a file searching or file sharing technology: it’s intended for a small number of publishers to distribute content to a large number of customers.”