Microsoft Corp. today announced the release to manufacturing (RTM) of Microsoft® Virtual PC 2004, a desktop virtual machine solution to help technical professionals migrate legacy applications to Windows® XP. Scheduled to be available by the end of 2003, Microsoft Virtual PC offers customers a cost-effective safety net to ease their migration to Microsoft Windows XP Professional and a tool to help accelerate the development, testing, deployment and support of PC applications. Microsoft Virtual PC 2004 allows enterprise customers to run multiple operating systems on one PC, so employees can run critical legacy applications on an interim basis while information technology (IT) professionals proceed with the migration to Windows XP Professional.
"Our enterprise customers have told us that virtual machine technologies are crucial for their migration needs," said Rob Short, corporate vice president in the Windows division at Microsoft. "Microsoft Virtual PC allows those customers to benefit from the gains in reliability, security and productivity of Windows XP, while also being able to run their critical legacy applications."
Microsoft Virtual PC 2004 marks Microsoft"s entry into the Windows-based virtual machine arena. The product is built on virtualization technology that Microsoft acquired in February 2003 from Connectix Corp., a company at the forefront of virtual machine development since 1988. Microsoft Virtual PC 2004 reflects Microsoft"s commitment to develop innovative software virtualization solutions for the Windows operating system platform based on Connectix products and technologies. Since the Connectix acquisition, Microsoft rearchitected Virtual PC and conducted rigorous testing to ensure that the product meets Microsoft"s security and reliability standards.