Application virtualization

This article may be weighted too heavily toward only one aspect of its subject. Please help by introducing more general information to this article. Feel free to discuss the issue on the talk page. (February 2019)

Application virtualization is a software technology that encapsulates computer programs from the underlying operating system on which they are executed. A fully virtualized application is not installed in the traditional sense,^[1] although it is still executed as if it were. The application behaves at runtime like it is directly interfacing with the original operating system and all the resources managed by it, but can be isolated or sandboxed to varying degrees.

In this context, the term "virtualization" refers to the artifact being encapsulated (application), which is quite different from its meaning in hardware virtualization, where it refers to the artifact being abstracted (physical hardware).