Microsoft has revealed that there will be delay in launching the beta version of its virtualization software Viridian along with the latest update of the current version.

Microsoft had announced that the beta version of Viridian will be released during the first half of the year. However now the company has said that it will be released only in the second half of the year. Mike Neil, general manager of Microsoft's virtualization strategy also said that Service Pack 1 of the company's Virtual Server 2005 R2 will be released by the end of this quarter, later that its scheduled March release.

Revealing the news in a blog post Neil said, "In an IT environment of ever-growing multi-core processor systems, Windows Server virtualization is being designed to scale across a much broader range of systems than the competition."

However he assured that the final version of the software, along with the company's Longhorn Server operating system is still scheduled to be released by the end of this year. Neil said that Viridian will be released within 180 days of the release of Longhorn.

Virtualization software is an innovative and emerging technology that allows a single computer to run multiple operating systems simultaneously. It is hoped the new technology would allow administrators more flexibility and efficiency in their computing departments.