In conventional implementations, applications are typically installed on each computing device on which the application is executed. When an application is installed on a computing device, intrusive changes may be made to the operating system. In this regard, different versions of the same application are often developed for installation on different operating systems. Further, the application, when installed on a particular computing device, may be tied to that computing device. In order to address these and other drawbacks of installed applications, application virtualization has been developed.
In application virtualization, a host operating system creates a simulated computer environment or virtual environment on a computing device to execute virtualized applications without installing the virtualized applications locally and without altering the host operating system. The virtualized applications execute locally using the local hardware resources and may interact with the host operating system, although aspects of the virtual environment may be hidden from the host operating system (e.g., registry keys, files, etc.). Because virtualized applications do not alter the host operating system, the same virtualized application may also operate on different operating systems.
It is with respect to these and other considerations that the disclosure made herein is presented.