Microsoft Buys Virtualization Maker Kidaro

Microsoft on Wednesday announced its intention to purchase a small Israeli company called Kidaro, which makes desktop virtualization management solutions for the enterprise. No purchase price has been revealed thus far, but an Israeli business journal reports the price as $100 million. Microsoft has been investing heavily in virtualization technologies lately and now offers a comprehensive range of virtualization solutions.

"The acquisition of Kidaro is an important component of our virtualization strategy, and it delivers a powerful new tool to help enterprise customers optimize their desktops," says Microsoft general manager Shanen Boettcher. "Kidaro's seamless user interface and management capabilities allow enterprises to more easily use and manage Virtual PCs."

Kidaro's solutions work with existing Microsoft virtualization products like Virtual PC to help enterprises deploy, operate, and secure virtual machines in their businesses. Kidaro also extends Virtual PC with new functionality, such as the ability to expose individual virtualized applications instead of just full PC environments, the latter of which can be confusing to users.

One question about this purchase involves Kidaro's support of non-Microsoft virtualization technologies. The company currently supports VMWare virtualization products as well, but it's unlikely that Microsoft will actively continue this support moving forward.