Microsoft Corp. today announced at the Interoperability Summit in Brussels that its virtualization format technology will now be available under its Open Specification Promise (OSP), an irrevocable promise from Microsoft to every individual and organization in the world to make use of this patented technology for free, now and forever when implementing specified open standards. Microsoft first announced the availability of an OSP for Web services specifications in September 2006 and now is expanding its customer-focused commitment to interoperability by applying the OSP to Microsoft’s Virtual Hard Disk (VHD) Image Format specification.

Virtualization allows IT professionals to pool resources; for example, one computer can run many operating systems and applications at the same time. The result is that organizations can better manage complexity, increase agility and reduce costs. Many IT professionals believe virtualization will be among the most important technology advancements in the next few years. Microsoft’s VHD format, which has been available since May 2005, captures the entire virtual machine operating system and the application stack in a single file. With the VHD format as a freely available specification, Microsoft is contributing to the continued expansion of the virtualization market by fostering interoperability among all commercial software solutions, including open source.

As a common virtualization file format, VHD has been adopted by more than 60 vendors, enabling partners such as Brocade Communications Systems Inc., BMC Software Inc., Diskeeper Corp., Fujitsu Siemens Computers, Network Appliance Inc., Virtual Iron and XenSource to help provide more seamless manageability, security features, reliability and cost efficiency for customers. Customers and partners realize the value of standardizing on the Microsoft VHD format because it is the Microsoft virtualization file format and offers migration across Microsoft Virtual Server, Virtual PC, and Windows Server virtualization with Windows Server “Longhorn.” The OSP will help further broad adoption of the VHD format.