Microsoft (finally) broadens Windows Vista virtualization rules

Microsoft has lifted its ban on enabling Windows Vista Home Basic and Home Premium in virtual machine environments.

The company announced on January 20 its decision to add the two new SKUs and planned to update its end-user license agreement to reflect the change. (Microsoft was planning on making the announcement at 12:01 a.m. on January 21, but another publication broke the embargo, so the company is going out with the news early.)

Microsoft almost announced in June, 2007, that it was relaxing some of its virtualization rules for Windows Vista, in order to allow users of a wider number of Vista SKUs to make use of virtualization technology on the desktop. Then, in the eleventh hour, something happened — exactly what still remains unclear — and Microsoft ended up halting the planned virtualization changes.

For businesses, Microsoft is offering an annual subscription to what it’s calling the “Windows Vista Enterprise Centralized Desktop” for $23 per desktop for clients covered by Software Assurance.
Microsoft also announced it has acquired Calista Technologies, a San Jose, Calif.-based desktop-virtualization specialist, for an undisclosed amount.

I have a question in to Microsoft about what these new virtualization changes, announced at a two-day Virtualization Deployment Summit for about 300 of its customers.

Until today, Microsoft’s end-user license agreement stipulated that users could run only the Business and Ultimate versions of Vista in virtual machines from Microsoft and other vendors. Microsoft attributed the original Vista virtualization restrictions to potential security risks, claiming that “security researchers have shown hardware virtualization technology to be exploitable by malware” and claimed Vista required an advanced level of know-how to thwart such virtualization exploits.

Any thought on Microsoft’s client-side virtualization changes? More to come on this story as it unfolds….

Source:- Mary Jo Foley