Microsoft last week said it will buy Calista Technologies as part of a plan to speed up adoption of virtualisation technologies.

The Calista deal will give Microsoft software that provides 3D and multimedia capabilities for virtualised desktops, the firms said.

Serguei Beloussov, chief executive of virtualisation firm SWsoft, said the acquisition is “good for every virtualisation company except Citrix”, suggesting that Citrix’s leadership in high-performance virtual desktops through its ICA protocol will be challenged.

But Microsoft will continue to work with, as well as challenge, Citrix. The firms said last week that they will develop a tool for transferring virtual machines between Citrix’s XenServer and Microsoft’s forthcoming Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V virtualisation. Licensing terms for virtualising home versions of Vista have also been relaxed.

The steps are intended to help take virtualisation beyond the sub-five per cent of firms Microsoft estimates are using the technology. In a dig at x86 virtualisation pioneer VMware, Microsoft server vice president Bob Muglia said “it is too cost-prohibitive and complex” to deploy virtualisation technologies today.

Separately, Raxco Software will this week release a disk defragmentation tool that can optimise virtual machines as well as the everyday files and folders stored on computer hard drives.

PerfectDisk 2008 will be available from this week in six versions, two of which are designed to work with VMware Workstation and VMware Server to boost performance and reclaim disk space from virtual machine images, eliminating the need for administrators to perform these tasks manually on individual virtual machines.

“We are optimising the entire process by defragmenting the virtual machines, re-indexing VMware internal data structures, and also shrinking the VMware drives to reclaim free space,” said Raxco vice president of operations Joe Abus-
amra. “The physical [host] machine’s drives are also automatically defragmented and optimised.”

PerfectDisk optimises virtual machines in accordance with VMware’s recommendations, Raxco said, and only needs to be installed and run on the host system.

PerfectDisk 2008 for VMware Workstation costs $100 (£51) for a single PC, while PerfectDisk 2008 for VMware Server starts at $200 (£102) for a single physical server licence. There are no restrictions on the number of virtual machines.