Microsoft announces changes in desktop/server virtualization and VDI strategy – UPDATED

Posted by virtualization.info Staff   |   Thursday, March 18th, 2010   |  

microsoft logo

One hour before starting a joint webcast with Citrix about its new virtualization strategy for desktops, Microsoft briefly announces a number of new initiatives, upcoming technologies and licensing changes.

About hosted desktop virtualization:

About bare-metal server virtualization:

  • Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 will introduce a memory overcommit technique for Hyper-V R2 called Dynamic Memory.
    The news leaked at the beginning of February.

About VDI:

  • The remote desktop acceleration technology acquired by Calista in January 2008, now renamed as RemoteFX, will arrive with Windows Server R2 Service Pack 1 and will be integrated in Remote Desktop Services (RDS).
    RemoteFX can be considered an accelerator for RDP over the LAN for Windows 7 SP1 clients only.
  • Beginning July 1, 2010, Windows Client Software Assurance (SA) will include the VECD license for free.
    Customers that don’t wont to subscribe the SA will be able to buy a new Virtual Desktop Access (VDA) license: $100 /device/year instead of $110 of the VECD.
  • Beginning July 1, 2010, Windows Client Software Assurance (SA) and new Virtual Desktop Access (VDA) license customers will have the right to access their virtual desktop and Office applications inside it on secondary, non-corporate network devices, such as home PCs and kiosks.
  • Microsoft and Citrix signed a new technology agreement to integrate and extend Microsoft RemoteFX with Citrix HDX.
  • Microsoft and Citrix launched a joint trade-in program dubbed “Rescue for VMware VDI”, offering up to 500 licenses to VMware View customers at no additional cost, and offering to new customers a 70% discount on Microsoft VDI Standard Suite subscription license and a 50% discount on Citrix XenDesktop VDI Edition annual license ($28 per device for up to 250 devices for one year).

Update: Brian Madden just published a video of RemoteFX in action.


Labels: , ,

blog comments powered by Disqus


virtualization.info Newest articles
Brian Gammage puts some order in VMware’s strategy

May 24th, 2012

Today Milan hosted the VMware Forum 2012, during the opening keynote Brian Gammage, VMware’s Chief Market Technologist, tried to collect all the news and declarations we heard in the last…

VMware acquires Wanova

May 23rd, 2012

Yesterday VMware announced the acquisition of Wanova Inc. a company whose main product is called Mirage.
Mirage is a centralized management and recovery solution for physical desktop images over the…

Paper: VMware vSphere Metro Storage Cluster Case Study

May 23rd, 2012

Yesterday VMware published a paper focused on VMware vMSC (vSphere Metro Storage Cluster), a new configuration within the VMware Hardware Compatibility List intended for environments where disaster/downtime avoidance is a…

EMC acquires Syncplicity

May 22nd, 2012

Yesterday, during its annual conference in Las Vegas, EMC announced the acquisition of Syncplicity, a cloud-storage privately held startup founded in 2008 and based in Menlo Park, California.
Terms…

Release: Oracle VM Server for x86 3.1

May 21st, 2012

On May 18th Oracle announced the general availability of version 3.1 of its x86 enterprise virtualization solution VM Server.
This release follows 3.0 announced on August 24th 2011.
All the new…

VMware shows View 5.1 performance improvements

May 21st, 2012

In this post, published on May 18 in VROOM! Blog, the VMware’s Performance Team presented some of the most significant enhancements and optimizations brought to Teradici‘s PCoIP protocol in the…

NVIDIA introduces World’s Firs Virtualized GPU

May 17th, 2012

On May 15th NVIDIA unveiled the NVIDIA® VGX™ platform that will be available later this year through NVIDIA’s hardware OEM and VDI partners.
This new platform promises to deliver…

Microsoft announces Assessment and Planning Toolkit 7.0 Beta Program

May 17th, 2012

Microsoft announced this week the new Beta version of its capacity planning tool Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) 7.0 Beta.
The Beta program opened on May 15th and the review…

VMware announces vFabric Suite 5.1

May 15th, 2012

Today VMware announced VMware vFabric Suite 5.1, expected to be generally available in Q2 2012.
vFabric Suite 5.1 includes vFabric Application Director, to automate the deployment and management of vFabric…

VMware CTO talks about R&D plans for the future

May 15th, 2012

On April 4 Stephen Herrod, VMware’s CTO, has attended, as guest speaker, at a VMUG meeting in Italy.
One of the key point of the speech, documented in one hour-long…

Citrix Hosted Server VDI Tech Preview

May 14th, 2012

Last week Citrix announced a new tech preview for Hosted Server VDI technology that allows cloud providers to leverage Microsoft SPLA to host VDI-style desktops obtaining a pay-as-you-go monthly subscription licensing…

Release: Atlantis ILIO Diskless VDI 3.2

May 11th, 2012

On May 7 Atlantis Computing announced the general availability of its Atlantis ILIO Diskless VDI 3.2, this product, tailored in particular for VMware View 5.1, enables virtual desktops deployment…

Citrix unveils Project Aruba

May 11th, 2012

On May 7 Citrix announced a technology preview of Project Aruba that extends Citrix VDI all-in-one proposal for the SMB market, VDI-in-a-Box, with personal vDisk technology.
VDI-in-a-Box, inherited from Kaviza…

Cloud Sidekick announced Early Access release of Cato EE

May 10th, 2012

On May 7 Cloud Sidekick announced the Early Access Program release of Cato Enterprise Edition (EE) which extends the Community Edition (CE) with Storm Deployment Automation and support for…

 
Monthly Archive