Over recent years, resource provisioning over the Internet has moved from Grid to Cloud computing. Whilst the capabilities and the ease of use have increased, uptake is still comparatively slow, in particular in the commercial context. This paper discusses a novel resource provisioning concept called Service-oriented Operating Systems and how it differs from existing approaches of Grids and Clouds. The proposed approach aims for making applications and computers more independent of the underlying hardware and increase mobility and performance. The base architecture and functionality will be detailed in this paper, as well as how such operating systems could be deployed in future workspaces.