Microsoft News Tracker

Microsoft is holding a private Virtualization Deployment Summit today and tomorrow for Microsoft customers and partners. An uncharitable view is that it is all fancy footwork to distract from the late and featured reduced Hyper-V (formerly Viridian), but there was some interesting news including the acquisition of Calista Technologies.

Microsoft has completed the acquisition of Calista Technologies, a leading provider of graphics technologies for next-generation desktop and presentation virtualization solutions. Calista software improves the user experience of 3-D and multimedia delivery for Microsoft multimedia applications, virtualized desktop deployments, and server-hosted virtualized desktops or applications using Windows Server Terminal Services.

Microsoft also finally backed off on the End User Licence Agreement (EULA) prohibition of the virtualization of Home Versions of Windows Vista which had caused adverse comment when it was revealed last year and was clearly an annoyance for developers (not to mention Mac users) although Microsoft had claimed security risks. Those concerns have apparently been allayed.

Finally, Microsoft renewed their vows with satellite Citrix, the long time provider of Microsoft-based thin client solutions and proud new owner of XenSource, and promised a new virtualization marketing push based on Windows Server 2008.

Microsoft’s Viridian virtualization software (aka Windows Server virtualization) that was supposed to be built into Windows Server 2008 is late and feature short, but Microsoft seems to be doing their best to bluff the other players at the VMworld conference today:

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Last week, thin client software provider Citrix agreed to purchase virtualization vendor XenSource for a whopping $500 million. Now the buzz is that Microsoft would prefer to own XenSource themselves and may derail the deal:

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Press release:

Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) and Citrix Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq: CTXS), today announced they plan to expand their existing partnership in access and end-to-end application delivery to make computing faster, more secure and more cost-effective for employees in branch office locations. The two companies will collaborate on developing and marketing a new multifunction Citrix branch office appliance based on the Microsoft® Windows Server® operating system and Microsoft Internet Security and Acceleration (ISA) Server and utilizing the recently announced Citrix® WANScaler™ solution.

The planned joint solution represents a new type of branch office appliance that combines advanced wide area network (WAN) optimization technologies with consolidated branch office services in a single, multifunction appliance that is easy to administer remotely. This combination helps solve a major problem for customers that cannot be solved today with traditional networking solutions or individual point products and that Microsoft and Citrix are uniquely able to address with their technologies, channel partners and customer reach.
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The joint marketing and development plan comes amid growing trends in both branch office IT consolidation and increased mobility among branch office and remote workers. An estimated 55 percent of enterprise employees today access all of their mission-critical business applications from a remote office location, according to Citrix’s research. Before these applications reach the intended user, they must travel long distances over wide-area networks (WANs), a process that can significantly degrade performance, impact the user experience and force expensive bandwidth upgrades. Support for workers in locations beyond headquarters is a major challenge for corporate IT departments.
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The new initiative builds on an already extensive partnership between these two market leaders and is the first step in a long-term plan by the two companies to collaborate on other Windows®-based application delivery and access solutions.

Citrix has long had a symbiotic relationship with Microsoft in the niche of using Windows server operating systems as hosts for thin clients - i.e. the end user applications actually ran on the server and results were displayed on client terminals. It’s sort of the old mainframe dumb terminal updated for the PC era.

However, to provide an equivalent look and feel to a regular Windows PC a good deal of data has to be transferred between the thin client and the server which puts a premium on bandwidth and makes it tougher when the connection is via WAN rather than LAN. This announcement is based on Citrix’s acquisition of Orbital Data whose WAN acceleration technology for this purpose is being reintroduced as the Citrix WANScaler. The magic behind the curtain is data compression and protocol optimization and it is useful for general WAN traffic like file transfers as well as the terminal scenario.

(Via Bink.nu) You may recall that Microsoft has just acquired application virtualization vendor, Softricity, and they haven’t waited long to put their own stamp on Softricity’s Softgrid product line - Thincomputing.net Exclusive - New Softgrid Pricing Announced: Drastically Lower:

Thincomputing.net has received information on the new pricing Microsoft has put on the Softgrid products. This is really earth shattering!

Prices of the Softgrid products will be cut by as much as 85%

Follow the link for the list, but it’s tens of dollars per user.

This will make Softgrid affordable for everyone. I think this is a giant step towards application virtualization becoming a commodity.
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The new prices are valid as of the first of August (so as of now) however the actual software will not be available until September the 29th.
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This information still has to be announced officially but that’s just a matter of time.

Discussion of some of the effects on the Microsoft - Citrix relationship by following the link.