It’s been more than 20 years since Microsoft used the "SE" moniker in its Windows 98 Second Edition, but it appears that the company is ready to bring it back with Windows 11. Internally referred to as the "Cloud" SKU, Windows 11 SE looks to be a tightly locked down edition meant for specialized use cases. Such restricted versions of Windows have gone by many names in the past, which is why we weren't surprised to discover references to a yet another new version in the recently leaked development build of Windows 11. Meet the new SKU: "CloudEditionL".

A new variant of the existing Cloud SKU might be Microsoft’s next attempt at continuing the legacy of Windows 10X, but it's too early to speculate. First of all, we have only spotted the key-ranges for the CloudEditionL and its "N" derivative (that doesn't feature Windows Media Player and related technologies) inside the product key configuration data of Windows 11. However, unlike Windows 11 SE, AKA the Cloud SKU, there is no product policy or upgrade path defined in the current leaked build for this particular SKU. As a result, we were unable to determine the marketing name of the CloudEditionL SKU.

The leaked Windows 11 build and the last few Windows 10 Insider Preview builds are all based on the "Cobalt" development branch, so we decided to dig a little further to track the evolution of the CloudEditionL edition. As a matter of fact, the key-ranges corresponding to the SKU first appeared on build 21364, but the true nature of this edition hasn't been cleared up yet.

According to the pkeyconfig certificate, this "L" variant of the Cloud edition should be sold only through the retail channel. In comparison, the regular Windows 11 SE should be available via OEM and volume licensing channels as well. Given that both of them are very much work-in-progress SKUs, we expect to uncover more information about them in the near future.