Set up on the road to democratize virtualization, Microsoft sees the technology as an indispensable component of Cloud computing, one that will ultimately support the realization of its own Software plus Services business strategy. In this context, the Redmond company is committed to delivering a strong set of software products designed to make virtualization ubiquitous. 2008 is in fact synonymous with a range of new releases including Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, the Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 hypervisors, Microsoft Application Virtualization 4.5, the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP) 2008 R2 and of System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008.

“There’s no question that the cloud is a very important next step in the evolution of the datacenter, and virtualization is one of the key enablers of cloud computing - or what we call software plus services. Virtualization enables workloads to move between on-premises software and the cloud,” revealed Mike Neil, Microsoft’s general manager of virtualization strategy.

According to Neil, virtualization is only in part about the hypervisor technologies, while the real deal breaker is actually management software. Microsoft has long touted the fact that the advantage of its virtualization solutions is a reduced price tag compared to its competitors in the arena. Neil indicated that the financial resources that would be spared are not connected exclusively with the actual price of the technologies but that they span across various aspects associated with the Total Cost of Ownership from lower power consumption to interoperability and management efficiency.

“Most people associate virtualization with servers, but application virtualization is really heating up. Application virtualization offers capabilities like dynamic provisioning, which allows end users to connect to their applications from multiple devices,” Neil added. “Microsoft’s latest application virtualization package, Microsoft Application Virtualization 4.5 (App-V 4.5), was released and will be available soon as part of MDOP 2008 R2.”