Computer giant Microsoft announced yesterday that it had bought virtualization solution start-up Kidaro, in a move to boost sales of its Vista platform. Industry sources surmise Kidaro will join Microsoft Israel's development apparatus. Microsoft did not disclose the price of the deal.
Ran Oelgiesser, Kidaro VP of Product Marketing and co-founder, said the acquisition will help Microsoft in its market penetration efforts for Windows Vista. It will allow enterprise users to run both the Windows XP operating system and Windows Vista on the same computer, as well as manage all their permissions remotely.
"Virtual technology is the ability to create an additional virtual computer system on an existing computer," says Ran Kohavi, who founded the company along with Oelgiesser and R&D VP Itzik Levy. "We founded the company with a vision that this technology can bring enormous added value to organizational computering which simply isn't utilized because there are not good tools."
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He contends that informaton-technology enterprise managers find it hard to control remote computers and to secure the organization's property as well as to meet regulatory rules.
"Kidaro's solution allows, for example, an employee working at home to install an enterprise computer systems environment alongside his private environment on the same computer," says Kohavi. "Thus an easy management platform is created, which combines speedy deployment, hermetic data security, and full control of user activity, together with a familiar and simple user experience."
The company explains that desktop virtualization enables encapsulation of an entire desktop - operating system, applications, tools and data - into a virtual machine that can operate as an isolated workspace on any computing platform.
The Ramat Gan-based startup only began operations in 2005. Today it employs 27 people.
The company's investors are VC funds Opus Capital, Genesis Partners and Storm Ventures.
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