The SCO Group, a provider of UNIXsoftware technology and mobility products, has released OpenServer 5.0.7V, a virtualised version of its UNIX operating system that is optimised for the VMware environment.

The company claimed that the new offering gives customers a familiar environment while increasing the performance of a virtualised infrastructure. With OpenServer’s stability and reliability, now available in a virtualised environment, customers can avoid migration and retooling costs in order to utilise newer hardware and applications.

The new offering is released as a Virtual Appliance image that can be imported onto VMware ESX 3.5, VMware ESXi 3.5 and VMware Workstation 6.5.2 for Windows platforms. Importation of the Virtual Appliance usually takes between 10 and 60 minutes to complete, depending on configuration, and configuration of the imported Virtual Appliance takes a further 5-10 minutes, the company said.

Once installed, the system reportedly behaves like a natively-installed OpenServer 5.0.7 system with all of the maintenance installed. Also, many of the VMware tools have been included to improve integration between SCO OpenServer 5.0.7V and the host VMware system.

Jeff Hunsaker, president and chief operating officer of SCO Operations, said: With OpenServer 507V, SCO is protecting our customer’s investment in their OpenServer applications by extending their life cycle without the need to migrate.

This provides a superior Total Cost of Ownership to an OpenServer 5 application while at the same time taking advantage of the significant performance gains with new modern hardware. We expect, in the near future, to release virtualised versions for OpenServer 6 and UnixWare 7.1.4 as well.