TechTarget just published an article about the upcoming VMware View 4.5, expected later this year (virtualization.info heard unconfirmed rumors about this summer).
The most interesting part of that piece is that ThinApp will be released as part of it, and that it will support server-side applications.
So far no company except the US startup AppZero (formerly Trigence) has claimed capability to virtualize multi-tier, mission critical server workloads through application virtualization technologies.
Besides AppZero, the only other company that is known for working in this area is Microsoft, which disclosed its plan for a server-side version of App-V in January 2008 and showed a first demo in May 2009 at its MMS conference.
So far Microsoft didn’t disclose any release date for such version of App-V.
The fact that VMware is about to offer server-side application virtualization my accelerate the Microsoft move and most of all may push the ISVs to support the technology.
The only question is if there will be any real interest in the new feature, considering the limited traction that client-side application virtualization has today.