It's been almost a year since Microsoft completed the acquisition of Softricity, Inc. and received the application virtualization technology of SoftGrid. And since that time, there really hasn't been a lot of announcements coming out of Redmond talking about the product or the technology. Microsoft has been working on SoftGrid 4.2 and offered a Technical Preview of the product earlier this month. Expected to be It’s been almost a year since Microsoft completed the acquisition of Softricity, Inc. and received the application virtualization technology of SoftGrid. And since that time, there really hasn’t been a lot of announcements coming out of Redmond talking about the product or the technology.Microsoft has been working on SoftGrid 4.2 and offered a Technical Preview of the product earlier this month. Expected to be released in July 2007, the product will contain several updates including Windows Vista compatibility, support for sequencing Side-by-Side (SxS) applications (such as Office 2007 and Visual Studio Express), and bug fixes since the 4.1 release.At TechEd 2007, Microsoft announced that SoftGrid application virtualization was going to be an important component in its Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP). They said, “Using SoftGrid, IT pros can deploy applications that are not installed on the machine and do not require regression testing against other software, yet are available wherever and whenever the user needs them and can run alongside otherwise conflicting applications.” Microsoft is also working with their Technology Adoption Program (TAP) to work out new capabilities in the future release of SoftGrid, version 4.5. Some of the features being mentioned are: Enhanced client scalability: improvements to allow very large deployments and integration with ESD systems, such as System Center Configuration Manager Availability and maintainability: the most stable and reliable version of SoftGrid to date Security tightening: the first SoftGrid release to go through the Microsoft Security Development Lifecycle (SDL) and enhancements to support internet-facing scenarios Globalization and localization: support for both virtualizing non-English language applications and running the SoftGrid user interface in certain non-English languagesInterestingly, the company also added timeframes around the product, showing a Beta release of SoftGrid 4.5 sometime in late October, with a release candidate due around mid March and then an RTM of SoftGrid 4.5 around May or June of next year. Software Development