Microsoft has finalized its acquisition of Israel-based desktop virtualization startup Kidaro and said that it plans to incorporate Kidaro's technology into the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP) during the first half of 2009 under the new name Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization. This technology will join Microsoft's Application Virtualization, formerly known as SoftGrid, which was acquired from Microsoft has finalized its acquisition of Israel-based desktop virtualization startup Kidaro and said that it plans to incorporate Kidaro’s technology into the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP) during the first half of 2009 under the new name Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization. This technology will join Microsoft’s Application Virtualization, formerly known as SoftGrid, which was acquired from Softricity.Kidaro’s technology is well suited to the mobile workforce and desktop environment and plays well within Microsoft’s Optimized Desktop world where Microsoft says the framework is based on technologies that enable decoupling the traditional desktop stack of hardware, operating systems, applications, data, and settings and user profiles. All of which Microsoft says will make desktop management more efficient and help with change and user migration.Microsoft said the Kidaro technology enables a seamless combination of applications running from within both a host and guest OS. And they added that the technology will help enable end-users to run applications from multiple versions of Windows at the same time, with seamless windowing and menus and without the confusion of logging into and seeing multiple virtual machine desktops. The company plans on using this technology to continue its momentum in the desktop virtualization market. According to Shanen Boettcher, general manager of Windows product management, “We’ve sold over 6.5 million licenses of MDOP to date, making it the fastest-selling volume licensing product in Microsoft history. It’s worth noting that 60 percent of IT pros who are familiar with MDOP have told us they intend to deploy MDOP within the next 12 months.”Microsoft has already invested more than $400 million in developing and expanding MDOP, and they plan to continue to invest in the technology because they said they believe “manageability is fundamental to broad corporate use of desktop virtualization.”VMware remains the 800-pound gorilla in the server virtualization space. There aren’t many people who would refute that, and VMware is doing their part to try and retain that market share dominance. However, what has been described as a potentially even larger market than that of servers in the datacenter, the desktop market is still up for grabs. Where anywhere between 5-10% of x86 servers are virtualized today, it is estimated that less than 1% of desktops run some form of virtualization. And Microsoft believes it has an answer to win over this audience with MDOP and System Center tools. Software Development