Do You Know the Different Ways to implement Virtualization?

Yesterday, Bob Muglia (Senior Vice President, Server and Tools Business) published a letter being sent to customers about our position on virtualization. Mr. Muglia's letter is titled, Harnessing the Power of Virtualization for Dynamic IT. I definitely learned some things from this, because when I usually think of virtualization, I think of machine or server virtualization.

I hope that our teammate Beth Humphreys will do some blogging on this. In that context, I grabbed a section that had some terms that I was not familiar with - that is, different types of virtualization and how we support them:

Server Virtualization: With Microsoft Windows Server 2008, server virtualization will be available as part of the operating system with the new "Hyper-V" feature. Microsoft's design approach improves virtualization efficiency and delivers better performance. (This technology is also available separately through Microsoft Hyper-V Server.) Hyper-V technology—as well as the currently available Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2—supports server consolidation, re-hosting of legacy operating systems and applications on new hardware, and disaster recovery based on application portability across hardware platforms.

Application Virtualization: Microsoft SoftGrid Application Virtualization transforms applications into centrally-managed virtual services that are streamed to desktops, servers, and laptops when and where they are needed. SoftGrid dramatically accelerates application deployment, upgrades, and patching by simplifying the application management lifecycle.

Presentation Virtualization: With Microsoft Windows Server Terminal Services, a Windows desktop application can run on a shared server machine and present its user interface on a remote system, such as a desktop computer or thin client.

Desktop Virtualization: Microsoft Virtual PC runs applications that are not compatible with the operating system on a desktop PC by supporting multiple operating systems on a single machine. It also accelerates testing and development of new software and systems. In addition, with the Windows Vista Enterprise Centralized Desktop license for hosted desktop architectures (also known "virtualized desktop infrastructures"), an entire desktop can be hosted on a server and remotely delivered to another desktop computer.

Another question - did you know that "virtualize" is not an official word?