Application virtualization

Application virtualization is a software technology that encapsulates computer programs from the underlying operating system on which they are executed. A fully virtualized application is not installed in the traditional sense, although it is still executed as if it were. The application behaves at runtime like it is directly interfacing with the original operating system and all the resources managed by it, but can be isolated or sandboxed to varying degrees. In this context, the term "virtualization" refers to the artifact being encapsulated (application), which is quite different from its meaning in hardware virtualization, where it refers to the artifact being abstracted (physical hardware). Full application virtualization requires a virtualization layer. Application virtualization layers replace part of the runtime environment normally provided by the operating system. The layer intercepts all disk operations of virtualized applications and transparently redirects them to a virtualized location, often a single file. The application remains unaware that it accesses a virtual resource instead of a physical one. Since the application is now working with one file instead of many files spread throughout the system, it becomes easy to run the application on a different computer and previously incompatible applications can be run side by side. Examples of this technology for the Windows platform include: Cameyo Ceedo Citrix XenApp Microsoft App-V Numecent Cloudpaging Oracle Secure Global Desktop Sandboxie Turbo (software) (formerly Spoon and Xenocode) Symantec Workspace Virtualization VMware ThinApp V2 Cloud Application virtualization allows applications to run in environments that do not suit the native application. For example, Wine allows some Microsoft Windows applications to run on Linux. Application virtualization reduces system integration and administration costs by maintaining a common software baseline across multiple diverse computers in an organization.