Interesting article for Infoworld, written back in April of 2008.
<taken from an Infoworld article>
Microsoft designing application virtualization on server
The technology will let apps get centrally managed on a server and then streamed to desktops, devices, or shared PCs, and can also deliver upgrades on demandMicrosoft is working on application virtualization technology for the server that is designed to provide administrators the flexibility to quickly deploy infrastructure and even stream applications on-demand.
The capabilities would be similar to the application virtualization capabilities available in the client side via Microsoft Application Virtualization (formerly SoftGrid).
SoftGrid, which Microsoft acquired when it bought Softricity in May 2006, lets users package applications into "containers," store them on a server where they can be centrally managed, and then stream those containers to desktops, devices or shared PCs. It also can be used for on-demand delivery of patches and upgrades.
The benefit is that each application has a properly configured operating environment tailored to its needs. It also ensures applications don’t interfere with each other, such as running different versions of Office on the same desktop.
"We are working to move server applications into stateless environments so applications don’t need to go through the install process; they can be copied on top of the operating system," said Microsoft senior vice president Bob Muglia in his keynote address at the company’s annual Microsoft Management Summit.
The effort is part of Microsoft’s expanding virtualization strategy ahead of the shipment of Hyper-V, the server virtualization add-on to Windows Server 2008 expected to ship this summer.
Microsoft wants to bring application virtualization capabilities to the datacenter so users can quickly roll out infrastructure (middleware and operating systems) and then deliver applications either directly to the server or streamed on-demand when needed.
Images of applications and infrastructure would be stored in an online library, and deployed dynamically ensuring that the middleware’s configuration is aligned with the needs of the application, but also allowing different versions of server applications to run on the same box.
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Around this topic, the Server Application Virtualization team has recently posted a blog entry on their site asking for people to participate in a survey to help them in their planning process.
“Our goal, as a team, is to improve server applications serviceability, reliability, and availability by allowing a consistent deployment experience. We’ll accomplish this goal by making Server Applications “Xcopy-able” without requiring application code changes, maintain application state separation and thus unifying the deployment and servicing processes.
Server Application Virtualization will allow customers to rapidly deploy and service Windows Server workloads in a manageable way. Today it may take days or weeks to provision applications in the data center. Decoupling the server application from the operating system affords customers a great deal of flexibility that can be applied in various scenarios to improve operational efficiency. Server Application Virtualization will allow IT departments and businesses act quickly and efficiently to the demands of their customers. The Server App-V technology will be able to run on bare metal or inside a virtual machine.
The Server App-V Engineering team needs your help! We need additional customer data to help us with our planning process to help ensure our next generation application virtualization software aligns with our customers’ business requirements and scenarios.
We would appreciate it if you could take 1 – 2 minutes to complete the survey below. Please include your contact information if you wish to be contacted and included in further discussions to help us shape the Server App-V product!”
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