SWsoft delivered to beta testers the first release candidate of Virtuozzo 4.0, SWsoft's container-based, operating system (OS) virtualization software. The beta was first announced in September and since then more than 500 beta testers have contributed to the improvements found in this release candidate.

"We are pleased with the progress of the beta program and are on track for general availability of the commercial version of Virtuozzo 4.0 early in 2008," said Serguei Beloussov, CEO of SWsoft. "Feedback from our more than 500 enterprise testers tells us that version 4.0 delivers a solution that will further reduce hardware and OS sprawl, increase uptime and enhance manageability. Along with our rich suite of management and automation tools, Virtuozzo 4.0 is a major upgrade for IT professionals seeking to optimize their computing environments."

The 4.0 release is a powerful release focusing on fitting into today's datacenters and meeting the real challenges of IT departments. Enhancements in 4.0 make huge strides forward in usability- providing even easier installs and a more intuitive interface. New features in Virtuozzo 4.0 include:

• Re-designed Management tools
  
• Full support for Windows and Red Hat Linux clustering services.
  
• A full set of backup enhancements
  
• Additional high availability and incremental processing capabilities with support for Microsoft Network Load Balancing.
  
• Robust centralized resource management.

SWsoft Virtuozzo is different from traditional hardware virtualization solutions in that it dynamically partitions a single Windows or Linux operating system instance into highly efficient and scalable virtual environments or "containers". Virtuozzo is the only virtualization solution that enables dozens to hundreds of containers to immediately and automatically leverage real hardware, resulting in exceptional datacenter efficiency from administrative, ROI, and energy-consumption perspectives.

More information about how customers are using Virtuozzo OS virtualization can be found at www.swsoft.com/en/products/virtuozzo/spotlights.