Major Microsoft Virtualization News Coming in September
As I mentioned
yesterday, I'm at Microsoft's
Worldwide Partner Conference in Houston. As I entered the pressroom a few minutes ago, I heard some information I wanted to quickly pass along. On a big-screen plasma display, Bob Kelly,
Corporate Vice President, Infrastructure Server Marketing, mentioned an upcoming milestone in Microsoft's virtualization program.
He said that on Sept. 8, Microsoft will be unveiling its end-to-end virtualization solutions. He didn't go into detail, but it's not hard to guess that he meant, at the least, the commercial release of System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 (VMM 2008). I'm not sure what other products could be launched, since Hyper-V is out, App-V (Microsoft Application Virtualization 4.5) will likely be out before then (it was at the Release Candidate stage in mid-June), and there's still not much news about Kidaro, the PC virtualization technology that will have some role in Microsoft's virtual desktop infrastructure offering.
My best guess (no promises on how good that "best" is) is that VMM 2008 will be the centerpiece announcement, with the other released products filling out the "end-to-end" solution. So mark Sept. 8 on your calendar; I know I am. I'll find out more, of course, and let you know about it, ASAP.
Posted by Keith Ward on 07/09/2008 at 12:48 PM