Earlier this year, Microsoft acquired virtual machine technology in response to requests for a solution that would help customers migrate legacy applications and assist them in consolidating applications onto fewer servers. Today, Microsoft is responding to customer demand with the release of the Microsoft Virtual Server Customer Preview.

Virtual Server is a Microsoft Windows Server--based application that enables customers to run multiple Intel-architecture operating systems -- such as Windows NT Server, Windows 2000 Server, and others, on one server, at the same time. It is designed to save IT organizations time and money by simplifying the upgrade process and optimizing hardware utilization. Virtual Server is part of Microsoft's ongoing efforts to take advantage of the power of industry-standard hardware and bring simplicity, automation and flexibility to IT operations.

The Microsoft Virtual Server Customer Preview is a pre-beta release, enabling customers to take an early look at this technology. While the customer preview is not feature-complete, nor performance-optimized -- and certainly not ready for use in production -- it will enable customers to provide feedback to Microsoft on the feature set, fit to customer scenarios and any issues they encounter.