Microsoft to buy Kidaro

Via mail from Microsoft’s PR firm the following press release was released today:

“Microsoft Corp. today announced its intended acquisition of Kidaro, a leading provider of desktop virtualization solutions for enterprises. In combining Kidaro’s virtualization technology with its suite of desktop management tools, known as the Microsoft Desktop OptimizationPack for Software Assurance, Microsoft will enable IT professionals to optimize their desktop infrastructure by providing management capabilities for Virtual PCs, streamlining deployments and easing application compatibility issues.”

It was a great coincidence that I had been looking at the Kidaro website and product just this morning. You can find the full release here: http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/press/2008/mar08/03-12ExpandVirtualizationPR.mspx

I have no practical experience with Kidaro but from the website it looks like it’s comparable to VMWare’s ACE product. I also noticed that you can use VMWare Workstation images as well as Virtual PC images to base your deployment on. Seeing as Kidaro will become a Microsoft product now I suspect that support for the VMWare images will be dropped soon.

Yet more takeovers: Novell acquires Platespin

I just noticed on the Platespin website that they put up a press release to announce the acquisition by Novell. After Dunes getting bought by VMWare and Vizioncore becoming part of Quest this is yet another major consolidation in the virtualization “tooling” space.

The press release can be found here: http://www.platespin.com/corporate/newsdetails.aspx?id=269. There is also an FAQ page available on http://www.platespin.com/novell/.

I am also curious what this means for still independant vendors like Leostream.