No. Not yet.

AIS (Application Inventory Service, part of the Microsoft Desktop Optimisation pack (MDOP)), delves deeper into a machine than most inventory software services, besides the add/remove MSI components, it also checks the registry etc. However, SoftGrid applications are not registered in the add/remove or in the registry, in fact, pretty much no-where; therefore no software asset service will find SoftGrid applications.

This will change going forward, for example, customers who adopt the MSI Utility and/or ESD (Electronic Software Distribution) technologies will register SoftGrid in the Add/Remove MSI components and this will in turn allow asset inventory services to detect SoftGrid applications deployed in this way (but not streamed applications).

If an Asset Inventory service was SoftGrid aware, then it could call the SoftGrid client and ask what applications were installed.

The sequencer can be a real machine or a virtual machine; commonly, virtual machines are used for the following reasons:-

• They can be reverted back to a known consistent state via undo or simple file copy routines.
• They can be manipulated via scripts and have their content changed remotely
• You can run multiple simultaneous copies on the same machine, or on dispersed host machines.
• They can be created and destroyed with a very fast turn-around

There are times however when a real computer is required; for example:-

• A specific piece of hardware is required, for example a fax card, USB device, or graphics sub-system.

If you have concerns over the performance of a virtual machine, see my items on performance, specifically on processor count.