Microsoft and Citrix have expanded their existing alliance to deliver a set of virtualisation offerings for desktop and server customers.

The companies plan to co-market forthcoming client computing offerings with the next generation of Citrix Presentation Server and Citrix XenDesktop.

Both products are based on Windows Server 2008 and Windows Optimized Desktop, and managed by Microsoft System Center.

Citrix Presentation Server and Windows Server 2008 enable customers to deliver remote Windows-based applications at a low cost and with high performance for users.

The next generation of Citrix Presentation Server will support and extend Windows Server 2008 and will help enable customers to use Windows Server 2008 for the remote Windows application execution workload.

Citrix said that XenDesktop is a complete desktop virtualisation system allowing customers to deliver Windows-based desktops to virtually all workers at a low cost, and with high performance and enhanced security.

XenDesktop is planned for release in the second quarter 2008 and will support and extend Windows Server 2008 shortly after the availability of Hyper-V, a hyper-visor virtualisation feature.

Mark Templeton, chief executive at Citrix, said: "Our development efforts enable businesses to deliver the right desktop experience to the right user at the right time for the increasingly diverse set of user needs."