Microsoft Application Virtualization, formerly known as SoftGrid Application Virtualization, is the first Microsoft-branded release of this product...

It includes:

• New capabilities designed to help IT support large-scale virtualization implementations across more sites and enable multiple delivery options.
• Globalization that lets users work in localized environments with localized applications.
• Dynamic Suite Composition that allows administrator-controlled virtual application interaction.
• Compliance with the Microsoft Trustworthy Computing and Secure by Default initiatives.

Microsoft Application Virtualization transforms applications into virtualized, network-available services, resulting in dynamic delivery of software that is not installed; minimizes application conflicts; and reduces costly application-to-application regression testing. Microsoft Application Virtualization is now available in a public beta on Microsoft Connect and will become generally available through the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack and Terminal Services in the third quarter of calendar year 2008.

"Virtualization: Making the Move" Webcast
Last month, Tony Iams, VP and Senior Analyst at Ideas International, Inc., conducted a webcast entitled "Virtualization: Making the Move," in which he reviewed the strategic and tactical issues involved with bringing virtualization technology into an organization. Virtualization is clearly having a major impact across the IT industry. It is generating genuine excitement in the IT community, and it has already proven its ability to deliver real business benefits in a variety of real-world environments. Many users are interested in deploying virtualization, but they may have a number of questions about the actual process of introducing virtualization technology.

In this webcast, Iams shared advice on several topics related to the deployment of virtualization, such as what you need to know about profiling an environment before virtualization; what the best way is to move files into virtual machines; and how to use virtualization for consolidation by combining the workloads of physical machines on a virtual machine platform. His major recommendations are to constantly stay focused on the actual benefits you want to achieve from virtualization; make sure you carefully choose the appropriate applications to virtualize; and carefully study the behavior of applications both before and after virtualization is introduced, particularly identifying their dependency on specific computing resources such as central processing unit (CPU), memory, and I/O. To watch the webcast and get more details, visit: InfoWorld Webcasts

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