What is Managed Application Hosting?

Managed Application Hosting is an umbrella term that describes software technologies that improve portability, manageability and compatibility of applications by encapsulating them from the underlying operating system on which they are executed. A fully virtualized application is not installed in the traditional sense, although it is still executed as if it is. The application is fooled at runtime into believing that it is directly interfacing with the original operating system and all the resources managed by it, when in reality it is not. Application virtualization differs from operating system virtualization in that in the latter case, the whole operating system is virtualized rather than only specific applications.

Benefits of application virtualization

• Allows applications to run in environments that do not suit the native application .
• May protect the operating system and other applications from poorly written or buggy code.
• Uses fewer resources than a separate virtual machine.
• Run applications that are not written correctly, for example applications that try to store user data in a read-only system-owned location.
• Run incompatible applications side-by-side, at the same time and with minimal regression testing against one another.
• Standard configuration in the underlying operating system across multiple computers in an organization, regardless of the applications being used, thereby reducing costs.
• Implement the security principle of least privilege by removing the requirement for end-users to have Administrator privileges in order to run poorly written applications.
• Simplified operating system migrations.
• Accelerated application deployment, through on-demand application streaming.
• Improved security, by isolating applications from the operating system.
• Enterprise can track easily license usage. Application usage history can then be used to save on license cost.
• Fast application provisioning to the desktop based upon user’s roaming profile.