Virtual Computer going into Beta with NxTop

In September, a new virtualization startup launched out of stealth mode: Virtual Computer. Beyond the interesting company name, the company drew immediate interest because it was founded by the same man who helped create Virtual Iron, Alex Vasilevsky.

Now, the company reaches a new milestone in its career, moving its NxTop solution into a private Beta stage.

So what is it?

Virtual Computer’s NxTop virtualization platform attempts to make managing thousands of PCs as simple as managing one. The company’s patent-pending technology isolates the PC’s critical components — hardware, operating system, applications, and user data — allowing each to be managed independently in a highly scalable fashion without a persistent network connection.

The company describes NxTop as having two components: the NxTop Engine (a bare-metal PC virtualization platform) and the NxTop Center (a feature-rich management console).

NxTop Center allows administrators to create a single master image of their operating system and core applications and publish it to any or all of their end-users. The master image is maintained through a Web console from which IT administrators can install additional applications, patch various components or update policies, and then publish just the “deltas” back to their users. The system also integrates with leading application virtualization technologies for independent management of applications residing outside the core image.

NxTop combines a variety of best-of-breed virtualization technologies, including the open-source hypervisor, Xen. And while the NxTop Engine hypervisor is based on Xen, the company also maintains full two-way compatibility with Microsoft virtualization technologies. They adopted the same Virtual Hard Disk (VHD) format for their virtual machines so that they could ensure that virtual machines created using Microsoft Virtual Server, Hyper-V, and Virtual PC would run on NxTop Engine.

Virtual Computer is taking an interesting approach at solving a complex task by trying to solve the PC Lifecycle Management problem. And if what they are offering sounds like something of interest to you, then you might want to fill out and register for your chance to participate in the NxTop Beta program.

The company said they are going to gradually roll out to an initial set of Beta users, and then expand to a broader case of users over time, extending into Q1 2009.