Release: Microsoft Application Virtualization (App-V) 5.0

Microsoft today announced the release of version 5.0 of its Application Virtualization Solution, also known as App-V. App-V 5.0 together with UE-V was first announced a public beta in April this year.

App-V is the product which Microsoft acquired in 2006 after taking over Softricity which provided the product Softgrid.

App-V 5.0 provides deeper platform integration, which allows applications to work more like traditional installed applications, the so called Dynamic Suite Composition which allowed 2 or more Virtual Applications to interact with each other is now called Connection Groups.

A big change here is that the so called Q: drive which is created after App-V client installation is removed from this version. Older App-V packages must be transformed to support the new version, Microsoft provides Windows PowerShell cmdlets to support that. Tim Mangan, Microsoft App-V has written an extensive article about what changed in this new version.

App-V 5.0 also introduces a new web-based management interface, which is based on Microsoft Silverlight and now supports both Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012.

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Tim Mangan, Microsoft App-V has written an extensive article about what changed in this new version.

App-V 5.0 and UE-V will be part of a new version of the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP) 2012, which is available for Software Assurance (SA) users. Technical information about App-V 5.0 can be found at the Administrator’s Guide on Microsoft Technet and Microsoft also provides a download with Documentation resources which can be found here.