Is Microsoft Application Virtualization or App-V?

The easy to say and to remember SoftGrid product, acquired by Microsoft in 2006, has now two names: the long one, Application Virtualization, and the new short one, App-V.

The use of category names for a product is already confusing enough: the newest application virtualization product from Microsoft is called Application Virtualization, while the newest virtual machines security wrapper is called Enterprise Desktop Virtualization (formerly Managed Workspaces, acquired from Kidaro in 2008).

But having two official names is even worse: App-V is a short and easy name which pairs nicely with the upcoming Hyper-V (which should be called HW-V at this point), and may be easily accompanied by a future OS-V (as soon as Microsoft will finally invest in the OS virtualization approach).

Obviously Microsoft is not the only one playing with generic names: VMware, Parallels, Veeam, Leostream and others are with the Redmond brand managers.

Isn’t virtualization a topic complex enough?