Microsoft updated its virtualization roadmap and announced plans to buy virtualization vendor Softricity on the eve of the kick-off of the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC). The Redmondians said Microsoft will release the final version of its hypervisor layer for Longhorn Server within 180 days of when Longhorn Server ships, which is currently slated to happen in the latter half of 2007. Microsoft also shared the final product names for its hypervisor, which had been code-named "Viridian" and now is known as Windows Server Virtualization, and its virtualization-management tool, code-named "Carmine," is now known as System Center Virtual Machine Manager. Carmine is slated to go to beta sometime in the next 90 days.