Microsoft Changes Vista License for Virtualisation

April 4, 2007: Microsoft has cleared up the grey area of Vista licensing for virtual machines, updating its licensing to allow the storage of Vista in remote locations for execution by thin clients.

The relaxation of licensing laws enables Vista corporate edition to be taken up in situations where security concerns dictate that storage and even processing are handled in a central data centre rather than on individual machines.

“We're responding to enable a set of early adopters in finance and governments, in particular, to take advantage of architectures that centralise Windows,” Scott Woodgate, director of Windows Business Group told cnet.com.au. “They either centralise the storage of Windows, the execution of Windows, or both, in the data centre.”

While enabling the use of thin clients the new license also allows multiple virtual versions of Vista to be run on a single server.

Microsoft says that organisations who do wish to run more than one server-based Vista virtual machines will have to invest in a Vista Enterprise Centralised Desktop licence as well as pay a separate fee for each virtual device.

In addition to this, only companies signed up to Microsoft’s Software Assurance scheme can purchase the new licenses.

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