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Where’s Microsoft’s virtualisation strategy?

Microsoft has been taking some flack for being behind the market when it comes to virtualisation, but all of that is changing. Microsoft’s got a strategy all right – and it’s one that could see it outpace the current leaders.

While everyone’s been mainly focused on hardware virtualisation, Microsoft has been engaged on a slightly different route. About a year or so ago they bought a company called Softtricity – which specialised in ‘application virtualisation’. What’s the difference?

Products such as VMware and Parallels (and Microsoft’s Virtual PC) virtualise the hardware – creating a fictional machine-within-a-machine which is walled off from the host, letting it do whatever it wants to without risk of contamination. Since most of today’s PCs are wasting most of their computing power, many PCs and servers can comfortably run several virtual machines, each blissfully unaware that they exist by virtue of a pretend environment.

Application virtualisation aims to solve a different problem. Normally applications are installed on PCs either locally or remotely using a tool such as SMS. Application virtualisation enables you to use an application on a PC – when that application isn’t really there. The code for the application is streamed to the host PC – it can take a bit longer to load than a truly installed application, but since virtualised applications can stream their code to the host, the code is loaded as it’s needed, which does help offset any delay. The application components are cached on the client, which speeds up access and allows for off-line access. The application will expire if it is not refreshed.

So what’s the benefit? The application code is protected, so it always loads ‘as new’ despite whatever the user might do with it. Better still, it can save organisations significant outlay on software licences – since these are per seat/CPU, you’d normally have to install them on all PCs. But now you can have fewer licences that are available to everyone, as needed – because it’s not likely that everyone will use it at once, fewer licences are needed. Neat – but do remember to check the terms of each license agreement…not all of them permit this approach.

Soft Grid isn’t for everyone – you have to be an enterprise customer to use it. So while Microsoft’s desktop virtualisation product is beginning to look a bit limited compared to the competition, Microsoft is aiming Soft Grid at a larger market. When you look at Microsoft’s other virtualisation offerings such as Terminal Services (which lets you run sessions on remote machines locally), Hypervisor virtualisation (virtualising servers on server hardware) with Microsoft Systems Centre in the middle of these, Microsoft has a real comprehensive solution that puts all of their ducks in a row – it’s just that the ducks are going after different fish.