OSNews

No, it is not a nonsensical question. Based on its description in the article, System Center Virtual Machine Manager sounds a lot like VMware ACE. It would be great if Vista VECD was license-compatible with VMware ACE.

I'm not sure about VMWare, but it will run on Xen on Novell SLES. They've made agreements to do so. This development is hardly a surprise to anyone who's been following statements made by third-party virtualization vendors. For example, I predicted this last August:

The proper way to interpret this whitepaper is that both Xen and VMware want to push forward with paravirtualization, and they're warning proprietary OS vendors that they need to cooperate in order to achieve maximum performance on their virtualization platforms. In other words, Microsoft needs to release yet another SKU for Vista: Windows Vista Virtual Client, or whatever.

I like my branding better than their's. But in any case, Microsoft is definitely moving in the right direction. I previously identified virtual client services as an area where Linux might have an edge on Microsoft in the enterprise. But depending on the quality and cost-effectiveness of Microsoft's solution, Linux might be playing catch-up again. Furthermore, while Red Hat is firmly committed to centrally-managed virtual clients for the enterprise, they might be playing catch-up to Ubuntu, which was first to tightly integrate LTSP with the Ubuntu/Debian packaging system (Project MueKow).

Thin clients are the way of the future in the enterprise. Microsoft has actually found a way to position Vista as a compelling corporate desktop platform. It could be challenging for Linux to compete against this offering. Or this could be a total dud. We'll see.