Application Virtualization Updated

Application Virtualization (App-V) version 4.5, formerly SoftGrid Application Virtualization, was released to manufacturing in Sept. 2008 and can be downloaded by volume licensing customers. App-V lets applications run in an isolated environment on each user’s computer and can deploy and update the applications from centrally managed servers. It is designed to make desktop management easier and less expensive by reducing conflicts between applications and allowing applications to be streamed from centrally managed servers so that users always have the most current version of the application. In addition to gaining Microsoft branding, the 4.5 update improves deployment and administration support.

App-V version 4.5 is the first Microsoft-managed release of the product and the first to go through the Security Development Lifecycle, a review and analysis process to detect and correct security vulnerabilities. In addition to improvements in isolation between applications running with App-V, centralized management functions were improved, as follows: