Another way to carry your worries wherever you go.
VMware’s mission to bring virtualization to the mobile market gained a major supporter last week when Samsung pledged to use VMware software to build business-friendly smartphones and tablets.
VMware already offers the View desktop virtualization client for Android and the iPad (but not the iPhone), allowing remote access to a Windows desktop from a mobile device.
But a more ambitious project known as Horizon Mobile will let Android phones use virtual machine technology to run a second instance of Android, in much the same way virtualization works on servers and desktops. The user essentially has two completely separate phones running on one device, and can switch from the personal one to the corporate one by clicking a “work phone” icon. VMware believes this will appeal to IT departments by isolating an employee’s work environment from his or her personal environment, while giving IT a Web-based management console to control what the employee may do on the work portion of the phone.
At the same time, the two environments won’t be much of a hassle for users. For example, phone calls will be received no matter what user profile is active. Although virtual machines on desktops and servers don’t necessarily run as well as a purely physical machine, VMware and its partners say the performance impact will be “minimal” and that Horizon Mobile will work on both single- and dual-core processors.
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