Company announces acquisition of Calista Technologies, expanded alliance with Citrix Systems and initiatives to enable virtualization from the desktop to the datacenter.

Microsoft Corp. today articulated an expanded role for virtualization as a key enabler of its Dynamic IT vision and outlined a companywide strategy to help accelerate the broad adoption of virtualization. To help drive its strategy, the company also announced the acquisition of Calista Technologies Inc. to improve the end-user experience for virtualized desktops and applications; an expanded alliance with Citrix Systems Inc. in the areas of client and server virtualization; more flexible licensing options for virtualization using Windows Vista; and new tools that provide best practices to deploy Microsoft virtualization software.

“Very few customers are able to reap the benefits of virtualization today,” said Bob Muglia, senior vice present of the Server and Tools Business at Microsoft. “We estimate that less than 5 percent of companies are utilizing virtualization technology because it is simply too cost-prohibitive and complex. We believe Microsoft’s comprehensive approach — from desktop to datacenter — is unique to the industry by delivering solutions that address virtualization at the hardware, application and management levels. Our approach is not only one of the most comprehensive in the market today, but we believe it is also one of the most economical. This combination brings a big strategic advantage and cost savings to customers.”

Today in an e-mail message to 300,000 customers and partners, and at the company’s Virtualization Deployment Summit, Muglia and other executives expanded on these comments and discussed the challenges facing businesses — from the high costs and complexity associated with managing today’s IT environments to space constraints and the ability to get the most out of existing IT investments. Microsoft also articulated how its strategy and investments in the area of virtualization are a key part of the company’s overall vision and long-term technology strategy for IT professionals and developers. This vision, called Dynamic IT, is aimed at delivering the right computing resources to people virtually anytime and anywhere, and creating an IT environment that is more efficient, flexible and cost-effective. With virtualization technology as a key driver of its Dynamic IT vision, Microsoft stressed the importance of the technology to its customers, reiterated its commitment in this area and outlined these areas of investments:

Flexible client and server solutions

Integrated management solutions

Accelerated broad customer adoption