Virtualization is the creation of a virtual version of an operating system, a server, a storage device or network resources. Computer hardware virtualization is the virtualization of computers as complete hardware platforms, certain logical abstractions of their componentry, or only the functionality required to run various operating systems. Desktop virtualization is software technology that separates the desktop environment and associated application software from the physical client device that is used to access it. Application virtualization is software technology that encapsulates and separates computer programs from the underlying operating system on which it is executed. The application behaves at runtime like it is directly interfacing with the original operating system and all the resources managed by it, but is isolated or sandboxed to varying degrees.
At enlyft, we use sophisticated, patent-pending algorithms to track the use of various Virtualization Platforms products and technologies. We track 77 products in the Virtualization Platforms category, and have found 579,683 companies using these products.