Hi, I’m Karri Alexion-Tiernan, Director of Product Management for Microsoft Desktop Virtualization, and today I’d like to share some updates around Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization (MED-V). As customers continue to plan for and migrate to Windows 7, they go through a process of evaluating application compatibility and identifying solutions that are available to assist them with simplifying the process. A few months ago, we shared that MED-V 2.0 Beta would be available in Q4CY2010. I am happy to announce that you can download the MED-V 2.0 Beta today!

You might be asking yourself “How does MED-V 2.0 help me migrate to Windows 7?” Let’s discuss that for a moment so that you can better understand the value of mixing virtualization technologies into your desktop strategy for the future.

Today, many customers are deploying and managing desktops in a traditional manner. By “traditional,” I mean using methods that they have fine-tuned over the years with large all-inclusive system images containing applications and hardware dependencies. In the best cases, some organizations have developed a more modular approach where regional settings, languages, drivers, updates and applications are determined dynamically at install time, but even those approaches can be refined with newer approaches and technologies that abstract applications and user data from the base desktop image and instead bring them together dynamically based on policies.

When migrating or upgrading to a new operating system, IT evaluates which applications are incompatible. They create a plan to deprecate incompatible applications, upgrade them, or leave a legacy operating system running on old hardware to ensure that users can continue to use them. If it is determined that the application cannot run natively in Windows 7 or costs to upgrade/recode the application are prohibitive, customers can bridge the gap with alternate solutions.

New approaches are now available in the form of Desktop Virtualization. With Microsoft’s Desktop Virtualization, we have broken the bonds between the OS, Applications, and Data and User Settings. With virtualization solutions in each of these areas, we provide our customers with the ability to take advantage of the best solution depending on their specific need. MED-V delivers a solution specifically for virtualizing a guest operating system on a local Windows device to address application to operating system compatibility issues.