Microsoft Wants to Change Desktop Virtualization

Server virtualization is a hot topic at this year’s Tech-Ed IT Professionals conference, but Microsoft is bullish on the importance of application virtualization technology. In his keynote, Bob Muglia, senior vice president of Microsoft's Server and Tools Business unit, highlighted an untapped opportunity “to take and separate applications from the underlying operating system image, and allow those applications to be delivered much more effectively without going through a complex installation process.” He said we’ll see these technologies over the next few years.
To show off how far it has come in the desktop virtualization space, Microsoft demonstrated how it has integrated technology from Kidaro, a company it recently acquired, to develop its "Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization" product. This solution gives IT administrators the ability to "manage and deploy virtual PCs out to their end users' desktops," as per Jameel Khalfan, a product manager for Windows. Got an application that is incompatible with Vista? Kidaro lets it run in a virtual machine. The technology also lets users control copy-and-paste between a virtual machine (VM) and the host system. Users can also redirect URLs to a VM.
According to Khalfan, Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization application will be included in the Desktop Optimization Pack when that product is released next year. The general opinion of conference-goers is, that if Microsoft, can deliver on this promise, they’ll be heroes in the desktop virtualization market.

-- Michelle Savage