"For many organizations, the cost of deploying, running, supporting and securing MED-V on hundreds or thousands of PCs that need IE6 access is exorbitant," writes Silver in the Gartner report.

Gartner concludes that using MED-V to virtualize IE seems like overkill, though if enough Windows XP applications are required by a company, MED-V may make sense for Software Assurance customers.

Microsoft has stated that its application virtualization tool, App-V (also part of MDOP), does not solve application-to-OS compatibility problems.

As an alternative, Gartner points out that four vendors recently launched application virtualization tools that focus specifically on virtualizing older versions of IE6 or IE7 and making them compatible for Windows 7. These vendors are: InstallFree, Symantec, VMware and Spoon.net.