Microsoft isn't wasting any time in assimilating the spoils from its February Connectix acquisition.

Microsoft is expected to commence tomorrow, April 15, its customer preview program for what it's calling the Microsoft Virtual Server (MVS).

The preview release will be a Microsoft-branded version of Connectix's Virtual Server, which has been in beta test with about 100 customers since November.

According to Connectix, users in automotive, financial services, food services and other Fortune 100 businesses are testing Virtual Server in consolidation and collaboration environments. Testers also are working with Connectix' programming and scripting interfaces for integration with new server-management applications, Connectix says.

MVS is a Windows-based server application that allows customers to run a variety of operating systems, including Windows 2000 Server, Linux, Unix and OS/2, concurrently on a single machine. MVS will be able to run up to 64 virtual machines (VMs) on top of either Windows 2000 Server or Windows Server 2003. These VMs can take advantage of up to 32 processors and 64GB of RAM.

For the past month, Microsoft has been playing up to its reseller and integrator partners the new revenue opportunities offered by MVS. The primary sell? Data consolidation.

But MVS also can figure prominently in other scenarios. Among them: Legacy application migration; isolation for development/testing/technical support (with each VM acting as a separate "sandbox"; software demonstration and simulation; courseware delivery and training; and software distribution (for delivery of pre-validated configurations of complex software solutions).

Microsoft has cautioned its partners that the preview is not code-complete, nor has it passed Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing internal security audit, which is de rigueur for all Microsoft products these days.

Microsoft has not announced a final ship date target for MVS, other than to say it will be some time this calendar year.