Microsoft charging into desktop and app virtualization, too

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January 21, 2008 (Computerworld) --

(Editor's note: This story initially misstated that Microsoft is now letting corporate users do desktop virtualization with any version of Windows Vista via its server-based Vista Enterprise Centralized Desktop (VECD) license. VECD continues to be available only for business versions of Vista. Also, the story incorrectly reported that Microsoft was moving to a concurrent-user licensing model for VECD. Actually, customers will continue to need a VECD license for every PC or thin client that is virtualized. Finally, Microsoft asserts that because its Terminal Services software and the streamed forms of desktop or application virtualization it supports rely on the same networking technology, the performance of the two approaches is roughly equal. The story initially said that Terminal Services was slower. It was updated at 7 p.m. EST on Jan. 30 to correct the errors.)

Most of the attention paid to Microsoft Corp.'s virtualization moves have focused on the server side, with its upcoming, virtualization-capable Windows Server 2008 and its stand-alone counterpart, Hyper-V Server.

But Microsoft is also gearing up in the desktop and application virtualization arenas, where server virtualization market leader VMware Inc. is less strong. On Tuesday, Microsoft announced a slew of moves in this space.

Microsoft is cutting the cost of licenses to do desktop virtualization with Windows Vista, and partly lifting other rules on customer companies.

Microsoft will also begin supporting customers who use its Application Virtualization technology to deliver multiple copies of Microsoft Office 2003 or 2007 to a single desktop computer at the same time.

The company also announced an alliance with longtime competitor and partner, Citrix Systems Inc., around desktop virtualization.

Finally, Microsoft has acquired a software firm with technology to improve the performance of its desktop virtualization.

Microsoft and visualization

Server virtualization involves using a hypervisor to create and run multiple virtual machines (VM) on a single server to increase efficiency and dependability.

Desktop and application virtualization also involves creating multiple VMs hosted on a single server (with an entire application stack and operating system in the desktop case, and just the application in the latter).

The difference between these two scenarios and server virtualization is that the VMs are then streamed via network to PCs or thin-client devices that execute the VMs locally. That allows applications to be more easily deployed and managed from a data center rather than installed on the local PC.

The technology is similar to Microsoft Terminal Services, where the company is actually a huge player with more than 50 million licenses sold, according to Shanen Boettcher, a general manager in the Windows client team.

Tech-wise, Terminal Services wholly hosts and executes applications from the server, although Microsoft said that its performance is roughly equal to that of desktop or application virtualization.

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