A Software Maker Goes Up Against Microsoft - New York Times

Timely snapshot 

One thing that Microsoft has lacked is a hypervisor, the lowest level of software that rests on the hardware and partitions the computer so it can cleanly and efficiently run several virtual machines. Microsoft is developing a Windows hypervisor code-named Viridian. It will be tailored for the next version of the Windows server operating system, called Longhorn, scheduled to ship by the end of 2007. Viridian will be ready shortly after that. “Virtualization, frankly, is a feature,” Mr. Neil, the Microsoft manager, said. “It’s a great operating system feature.”

Source: A Software Maker Goes Up Against Microsoft - New York Times