In a very welcome move today, Microsoft is further easing the migration concerns of enterprise customers by throwing them a major league bone by giving them the right to install Vista on diskless PCs, and the availability of the Vista Enterprise Centralized Desktop.

Using Vista Enterprise edition in conjunction with the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack would allow customers to secure PCs, centralize applications, and increase productivity while decreasing deployment costs

While available only to Software Assurance customers using Windows Vista Enterprise, these two new ways broaden the customer's ability to license and deploy the operating system. 

1. The license right to use Windows Vista on diskless PCs, which is simply a PC that runs Windows but does not store Windows or data locally because it does not have a hard drive
2. The availability of a subscription license called Windows Vista Enterprise Centralized Desktops (VECD) which allows customers to use Windows in virtual machines centralized on server hardware. VECD enables customers to deploy and run Windows Vista Enterprise in virtual machines on server hardware. It provides a Windows experience that is centrally executed in the datacenter and delivered out to either PCs or thin clients.

Using VECD with PCs provides a flexible combination of local and remote computing including mobility and off-line usage. Using VECD with thin clients lets customers who are always connected use minimum footprint devices.

Both options provide a complete Windows experience for end users connected to the corporate network, typically delivered over Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) – a multi-channel protocol that allows a user to connect to a computer running Microsoft Terminal Services. It also allows IT administrators to centrally manage, provision and store Windows images. Of the two options, we think using VECD with PCs is often a better choice for most customers because it still allows local and offline use of productivity applications, such as Microsoft Office, while providing centralization for line of business applications.

The official release is here.