VMware’s dual-persona smartphones phones finally available to purchase
Verizon selling Motorola and LG devices loaded with VMware software.
The first two phones to run VMware's dual-persona software.
At long last, VMware's dual-persona software for smartphones is available on actual devices. Today, VMware and Verizon Wireless announced that the Android-based LG Intuition and Motorola Razr M can now be purchased with VMware's Horizon Mobile software, which separates the device into isolated partitions that keep a user's work applications and data separate from personal stuff.
VMware began promising virtualized smartphones in 2010, claiming they would be available for sale in 2011. Samsung promised to support VMware's virtualized phone vision in September 2011, and VMware started promising virtualization for iPhones and iPads in August 2012. We called it "vaporware."
Samsung and Apple devices still aren't running the dual-persona software, but it's nice to see VMware phones finally materialize. VMware and Verizon said the Intuition and Razr M are immediately available for sale with Horizon Mobile software. Perpetual licenses to Horizon Mobile start at $125 per user and "can be purchased through local resellers of VMware and Verizon Wireless," the companies said.
Horizon Mobile runs a hypervisor on the Android phone to create a guest operating system—a second instance of Android—to isolate a user's work or personal apps and data. The user's employer can then manage the corporate side of the phone without having any visibility into the user's personal space. The corporate side of the device is encrypted and can be integrated with "standard enterprise directory services."
"The old BlackBerry model of locking and wiping the device is no longer in line with how employees use their devices," Srinivas Krishnamurti, VMware's Senior Director for Mobile, wrote on the company blog. "IT administrators can now leverage VMware Horizon Mobile to isolate personal content from corporate content and only manage the corporate content on the device. The corporate content resides in a 'workspace' whose lifecycle and usage is managed by IT. IT can customize what apps are in the workspace and what policies are applied to the workspace, provision the workspace to the user’s device over the air (OTA) and then manage its lifecycle remotely."
VMware is far from the only player in the dual-persona space. BlackBerry is rolling out "Secure Workspace" technology for iOS and Android and has BlackBerry Balance for its own devices. Similar functionality comes from Good for Enterprise, and Verizon previously partnered with a company called Divide to offer dual-persona capability. Divide can be used for free on iOS and Android phones.
So will people buy VMware phones? We polled Ars readers last December and the answer was clear: you guys want dual-persona phones. However, we'd think that dual-persona systems would only really take off if they hit the most popular devices, namely Apple's and Samsung's. A true "bring-your-own-device" model for IT should give users a wide choice of phones and tablets.
Although everyone wants a piece of the mobile device market, VMware can't afford to make smartphone virtualization its top engineering priority, as it fends off a serious challenge from Microsoft to its core server virtualization and management business. But VMware said it will continue working with Verizon to "enable a broad set of new and existing devices."
No comments:
Post a Comment