Information retention, virtualisation and software as a service

I was reading recently about the challenges of information retention for digital records, where the software and hardware necessary to access the records needs to be retained in addition to the digital records, or the digital records be converted to a more current format.

I suspect this problem may be addressed by virtualisation. It should be possible to virtualise every computer system, and every piece of software. This would eliminate the need to retain the necessary hardware and software, or to convert the records.

I would like to see a future where every piece of software ever written can be virtualised and accessed by any person over the internet.