What is application virtualization?
The idea behind application virtualization is a simple one: you run an application on your desktop without ever having installed it. Unlike using Terminal Services, this application executes locally, using local resources (e.g., processor, memory, disk, and network card). In other words, the application runs, saves data, prints, and acts as if it’s installed locally even though it is not. Besides this, you can run multiple versions of the same application on your desktop without conflict—again, with all the applications executing locally – and not as “screen scrapes” from a remote terminal server. Let’s clarify things a bit with a simple visualization. The image below shows the basic concepts of application virtualization—the application executes on the local machine using its resources, but is not allowed to modify anything. Instead, it runs in a small virtual environment that contains the registry entries, files, COM objects, and other components that it needs to execute. This virtua
