Microsoft is continuously striving to enable a seamless optimized desktop experience across its Windows Vista operating systems. At the core of the Redmond company's efforts is the necessity to create a framework that would enable an advanced level of desktop management. Such a scenario is possible through "decoupling the traditional desktop stack of hardware, operating system, applications, data, settings and user profiles", revealed Shanen Boettcher, General Manager of Windows Product Management for the enterprise. One aspect of Microsoft's multi-faceted desktop optimization solutions is permitting applications from different Windows Vista platforms to coexist on the same desktop.

In the first half of 2009, Microsoft will "help enable end users to run applications from multiple versions of Windows at the same time, with seamless windowing and menus, and without the confusion of logging into and seeing multiple virtual machine desktops", Boettcher promised. In 2007, Microsoft announced the acquisition of Kidaro Technologies, revealing that the company's solutions would permit not only making Virtual PC ubiquitous across Windows desktops, but also turning Virtual PCs invisible.

"The product teams are working closely with our new colleagues from Kidaro to incorporate the desktop virtualization technologies into MDOP in the first half of 2009, under the new product name Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization. We will continue investing here because we know manageability is fundamental to broad corporate use of desktop virtualization", Boettcher added.

The Redmond company has been expanding the Microsoft Optimized Desktop Pack since its introduction and the addition of Kidaro Technologies is just the latest step in a journey that will deliver advanced optimization to desktop management. Microsoft's Windows Optimized Desktop efforts are of course addressed at corporate customers, a segment that has traditionally shown a strong level of resistance to migrating to new technologies and specifically to adopting new Windows operating systems, including Windows Vista.