I'll take a stab at it (no relation to Microsoft). As described in the following link, App-V does streaming of client app code from a server, appears very client-oriented. The technology behind it might not be, though: http://blogs.technet.com/b/gladiatormsft/archive/2013/11/05/... (describes the registry key with exceptions to the underlying namespacing of handles, I think?) This appears to be called Named Kernel Object Virtualization (a.k.a. the VObjects Subsystem) from the title of the post. But again, client-side oriented. I expect Docker integration to be server-side oriented code for this. Oh and if anyone's saying Microsoft's late to the party, there have been similar attempts on Windows platforms since at least 2006 using such techniques: https://www.usenix.org/legacy/events/vee06/full_papers/p24-y...