Redmond's virtualization shift continues

Gearing up for a big virtualization event next week, Microsoft on Wednesday announced another round of changes to its lineup of virtualization policies and products.

Among a new series of changes being rolled out is the ability for businesses to allow their corporate PC image to be run in a virtual machine on PCs owned by employees or contractors.

To pave the way for this, Microsoft announced that either option is now covered under an existing licensing program that costs $110 per PC per year. Workers with desktop PCs that only need occasional remote access to their work PC image can do so under a new license that costs $23 extra per PC per year, provided the computer in question is also part of Microsoft's Software Assurance program.

These changes, according to Microsoft's Scott Woodgate, are being made not so much because lots of businesses are doing these things today, but rather to try to make sure that it is not Microsoft's licensing policies that are stifling businesses' creativity.

In another licensing shift, Microsoft will enable hosters to stream versions of a third-party software using its technology. Of course, businesses will still need to make sure the third-party software in question can be properly licensed in that way.

Microsoft also announced a new version of its SoftGrid technology, now known as App-V (short for application virtualization). Although hardware virtualization, which moves computing tasks from one server to another, gets most attention, Woodgate said that application virtualization is poised to be big on the desktop.

"Application virtualization for us is as important on the desktop as hardware virtualization is on the server," Woodgate said.

Separately, VMware noted on Wednesday that its VMware ESX hypervisor was certified under the recently announced Microsoft Server Virtualization Validation Program, which means that Microsoft will now support software running inside a VMware virtual machine as it would if the program was running outside a hypervisor. Previously, Microsoft had typically required that any problem a customer encountered be reproduced outside a hypervisor in order to get support--a major thorn in the side of customers that rely heavily on virtualization.

[humanssssss]

I think the original term of sale for consumer based sell of Windows XP is per license. Now Microsoft wants to change existing term of sale to include per license per user. This is retroactive pricing to squeeze what is left on a dying dinosaur. The GREAT EXODUS will come as more and more applications are Windows independent. The hardware vendors who are tied to Microsoft will feel the wrath of future consumers.

[Penguinisto]

Gee, $23/year for MSFT's solution, and only if you buy into their bulk licensing program (read: $$$$)...

...versus $0.00 for VMWare Server, $0.00 for KVM and VirtualBox, and $0.00 for the existing tools to make all that happen in any infrastructure.

Sounds like a deal (not).

[Dragon Forge]

ms the dog has lost my interest. I'm not buying h/w that runs on vista - no matter what price drops and technology comes out for videocards. I was pricing everything for another system and said "to heck with it" - there is no particular application business or otherwwise that I do not have the capacity for in my xp machines. The gambit to turn gamers off the pc and get them to buy the xbox has severly backfired and I will be getting another ps3 - got everything except an xbox. I dont support amdati either since they were colluding with MS and gelded the integrity of 9x drivers and ignored support calls this last year.

Nah they can go 'there' and license whatever the heck they want - my next pc will most likely be an Apple and another lynx (LOL). even my government is staying completely away from vista - forever.