When Microsoft officially officially launched its new Server Virtualization Validation Program (SVVP) just two weeks ago, an unexpected vendor applied for it: Cisco.

The SVVP program is developed to extend the support that Microsoft offers on Windows Server and most back-end servers to those 3rd party hypervisors that pass validation.

As far as we can understand, there’s no reason to apply for this program without a hypervisor.
So, or Cisco is about to announce a hypervisor, or the SVVP has additional purposes that Microsoft didn’t detail.

Today another unexpected vendor appears on the SVVP applicants list: Unisys.

It’s not a secret that Unisys is heavily involved in virtualization, omnipresent in virtualization adoption projects across the globe, but as far as we know the company doesn’t offer (yet) a hypervisor.

As Unisys contributes to the Xen open source project, this may be the first step to launch a Xen-based solution.