Windows Vista Enterprise: Exclusive Features
An optimized desktop infrastructure is enabled through a combination of integrated technologies, anchored by Windows Vista Enterprise. This operating system includes several exclusive features that help organizations better manage and deploy complex desktop infrastructures. Adding Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack can streamline your business, reduce cost, and increase security. And, enterprise early-adopter organizations looking to centralize Windows execution or storage have two new options with Flexible Desktop Computing.
Watch a short overview video about Windows Vista Enterprise. Below are descriptions of the exclusive features you'll find in this edition of the operating system.
Organizations face increasing concerns around intellectual property and sensitive data being compromised on a lost, stolen, or recycled computer. To address this issue, Windows Vista Enterprise includes Windows BitLocker Drive Encryption, a new technology that helps prevent sensitive data and intellectual property from falling into the wrong hands.
Windows BitLocker uses hardware-based full-volume data encryption technology that gives you greater peace of mind knowing that your corporate intellectual property is safer and will remain your strategic asset. Also, since the entire hard drive is encrypted, Windows BitLocker reduces the cost associated with decommissioning old PCs. Watch the video.
Organizations have to factor in the potential cost and complexity of application compatibility issues when they consider a new desktop operating system. To address these concerns, Windows Vista Enterprise includes built-in tools to improve application compatibility with previous versions of Microsoft operating systems, as well as with UNIX operating systems. These tools help you take advantage of the unique capabilities provided by Windows Vista even if you are unable to easily migrate a legacy application to the new operating system.
With Windows Vista Enterprise, you may install up to four copies of the operating system in a virtual machine for a single user on a single device. This enables you to run a legacy application in a virtual environment on top of Windows Vista Enterprise. This benefit, coupled with the free availability of Virtual PC, provides Windows Vista Enterprise customers with the most economical means to address application compatibility and other related scenarios using virtualization.
Additionally, to ease interoperability between Windows and Unix, Windows Vista Enterprise includes Subsystem for UNIX-based Applications (SUA). This enables you to run UNIX applications unchanged on a Windows Vista Enterprise-based PC. Whereas today a UNIX database administrator or system administrator needs to have a UNIX workstation in addition to a Windows-based PC, Windows Vista Enterprise enables you to consolidate both functions into a single Windows Vista-based PC. Watch the video.
Windows Vista Enterprise customers that subscribe to the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack for Software Assurance have additional options for minimizing application compatibility challenges. This service can accelerate deployment with tools such as SoftGrid for application virtualization, which can reduce application-to-application conflicts, and with Asset Inventory Services, to help you more quickly compile information about applications running inside your organization. Watch the video.
An interface language controls which language a user sees in the Windows Start menu, in the help system, in built-in management tools, and in Windows dialog boxes. In the past, Windows was offered in different versions for different languages, so organizations operating worldwide faced the burden of managing multiple desktop images for each hardware type and language supported.
Today, Windows Vista Enterprise includes all available interface languages in one offering. This enables organizations to build a single deployment image that can be used worldwide, and to deploy individual PCs that simultaneously offer different interface languages for different users. The Multilingual User Interface (MUI) feature helps you save a significant amount of time as you prepare to deploy the new operating system as well as lower the total cost to deploy and maintain new images.
For more detailed information, see the Windows Vista TechCenter.
Some product features are only available in certain editions of Windows Vista and may require advanced or additional hardware.
