Microsoft acquires Sentillion

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With a surprising move Microsoft today announced the acquisition of Sentillion, the US startup that launched in summer 2006 the virtualization product called vThere.

The company’s press announcement doesn’t mention at all vThere, solely focusing on the startup presence in the healthcare industry and its solution there.

vThere is what we call here at virtualization.info a platform wrapper. It’s a piece of software that integrates with a hosted virtualization platform and wraps its virtual machines in a security layer.
The wrapper enforces corporate policies defined by the administrator like the VM expiration date, the encryption of the virtual hard drive, the capability to join certain networks, etc. 

Sentillion vThere competes with products like VMware ACE, which is now about to be merged with Workstation, MokaFive Suite, and Kidaro Workspaces, which Microsoft acquired in March 2008 and that now sells with the name of MED-V as part of its Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP).

At the beginning vThere used to integrate with VMware Player, but at the end of October 2006 Sentillion decided to replace it with Parallels Workstation.
The company doesn’t release any major product update for vThere since the end of 2006. The product is so irrelevant for Sentillion that it now barely has a single page on the corporate website.

It’s not clear if Microsoft will use the vThere technology for MED-V or just drop the product.

The virtualization.info Virtualization Industry Radar has been updated accordingly.