Don't Stop Virtualization At Your Hardware: Virtualize your Apps!

With all the buzzwords going around, there is no doubt you have heard the term virtualization more than a couple times. The term has mostly been associated with server consolidation and the ability to host numerous virtual servers on a single physical server, thus giving greater hardware utilization and flexibility, decreasing provisioning time for new system deployments, and significantly reducing energy costs.

The latest area to be included in the broad and encompassing term of virtualization is application virtualization. Application virtualization can be thought of as the ability to encapsulate, package and deploy applications isolated from the operating system. It is not installed in the traditional sense but still has the appearance of a conventional application without many of compatibility issues and conflicts.

The market leader in virtualization technologies is VMware, and they have a solid entry into the virtual application space with their ThinApp product. ThinApp provides application virtualization with features such as:

• Flexibility: Ability to run any version, or multiple versions, of your applications on a single operating system. For example, the ability to run two versions of an application on the same computer.
  

• Stability: Eliminates conflicts between applications by packaging each application with its own registry changes and DLL files separate from the operating system. In a sense, wrapping an application to isolate it from the environment it runs on.

• Security: Runs applications on securely locked-down workstations without needing to give privileges or user rights. This maintains the highest levels of security and allows you to extend a defense-in-depth strategy all the way to the desktop.

Installation of the program is very straight forward and packaging applications feels similar to the Novell ZENworks SnapShot process. You also have the ability to set permissions, select compression, and choose an isolation mode prior to building your installation file. After the application is built, you can deploy the virtual application to clients. A dedicated server is not required for deploying applications as you can deploy packages from any network share.

I think all areas of virtualization offer great benefits and application virtualization is no different. VMware ThinApp is a very flexible and robust solution and should be considered when planning your overall virtualization strategy. Virtualization is continuing to grow at a fast rate and I believe application virtualization will be a key technology for the future.