Citrix will ship in the third quarter a technical preview of Open Virtual Machine format tools that will allow developers and IT pros to create virtual, portable application workloads that run on XenServer and Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V. Oh, and yes, add VMWare ESX to that list

The hypervisor independent tools, being developed as part of a project code named “Kensho,” will enable interoperability across multiple virtualization platforms as well as automated provisioning and management of these workloads, also known as virtual appliances. Unlike simple virtual machines, appliances incorporate the application workload itself and significant information about CPU and memory requirements.
 
Citix and VMware originally co-sponsored the Open Virtual Format with contributions from Dell, HP, IBM and Microsoft.

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