Even as a new player on the virtualization market, Microsoft has touted intentions to democratize the technology. Despite the perception of a revolutionary novelty, virtualization in fact dates back all the way to the 1970's mainframes. However, the technology has so far failed to gain sufficient traction, despite the obvious advantages it is offering, especially in terms of making the best out of limited hardware resources. Through the voice of Kevin Knox, Worldwide Commercial Business VP, AMD has applauded Microsoft's venture into the virtualization space as a catalyst of innovation.

"While Microsoft has invested in a variety of virtualization areas over the years including partnerships, acquisition and new technologies, they now seem to have a clear strategy and roadmap for delivering broad virtualization technologies across the enterprise. This is not to suggest they will be better or worse than anyone else, but rather having Microsoft in the game will help drive innovation, push the competition and allow for a more competitive marketplace, which ends up being a good thing for end users," Knox stated.

In terms of virtualization becoming mainstream in the corporate environment, Microsoft's big bet is Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V. The hypervisor delivered as a component of Windows Server 2008 was released to manufacturing at the end of June 2008, one of the last pieces of the puzzle that is the latest Windows Server operating system. With Hyper-V Microsoft is attempting to kick the level of virtualization technology implementation in enterprises to the next level. In addition, the company announced earlier this week that it was relaxing the licensing rules for no less than 41 different applications, enabling customers to transition them without any troubles between the machines in the same server farm.

"Microsoft's years of experience in operating systems and infrastructure software will also help enable new features and function and enable emerging technologies such as Dynamic Provisioning. One thing I can assure you from my years at AMD is that competition drives innovation and value for the end-users, for the ecosystem and the industry as a whole," Knox added.