Cost-Saving Consolidation

Microsoft Acquires Virtual PC Technology

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Many enterprises face a major hurdle during the transition from Microsoft Windows NT Server 4 to Windows Server 2003: the cost and complexity of migrating their applications to the new OS. In fact, the cost of acquiring new versions of applications compatible with the new OS far outweighs the cost of the OS migration itself, which is already significant. Virtual machines (VMs) present a cost-effective answer to this dilemma, and Microsoft acquired Connectix Corp. in order to enter the VM market.

VMs allow a machine and its host environment to run multiple isolated and partitioned guest environments. For many years, VM technology has been available and used on mainframes that had microprocessors designed to support VMs. With PC platforms recently gaining the requisite compute power to tackle VMs, companies have recognized an incentive to overcome the technological hurdles of implementing VM technology on processor architectures that weren't originally designed for VM support.

Because many NT 4 boxes are nearing the end of their lives and often have low utilization rates, a migration to VMs will allow for an efficient consolidation of these systems on the more powerful x86 machines available today.

A VM guest environment lets an entire OS boot and run transparently to the user without modification to the OS or applications.

Microsoft acquired four Connectix products, but one was its main target: Virtual Server. Virtual Server has never been in production, only recently beginning beta.

Virtual Server runs only in Windows environments and supports Windows 2000 Server and NT Server, Linux, Unix, and IBM OS/2 for guest OSs. Microsoft plans to ship Virtual Server by fall 2003, with a preview release in April.

Virtual Server competes with products from VMware Inc. (www.vmware.com) and OpenOSX (www.openosx.com) that offer additional host OS options and more robust I/O. One path Microsoft is considering for Virtual Server is migration of some of the VM technology into the standard distributions of Windows.

For the next six months, Connectix will be responsible for the sales and support of the transferred products before their availability in the full range of Microsoft channels. The remaining Connectix products are already slated for end of life in 2003.

James Honey [jhoney@flash.net] has 20 years' experience in product development as an engineer and executive.

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