“[VMWare’s] latest creation is a tool called Horizon Mobile, and it too is meant for big businesses. The idea is that employees can use a phone’s native operating system for personal tasks, but then switch over to a virtual machine that runs a separate OS for business tasks.”
This sounds a lot like a solution in search of a problem.
More like a train wreck in search of trains.. I can’t fathom who the market for this is. Maybe bitter IT departments wanting to inflict pain on their BYOD users? Who knows…
There were demos of Vmware Mobile running on the Nokia N900, but it was sadly never released.
I don’t know, having a fully portable Virtualized environment could seriously rule…
Actually this makes it easier for users to BYOD. Due to regulatory compliance on numerous fronts IT departments need to be able to strip access to email and remote systems as fast as possible. Being able to wipe a virtual image is far better than wiping an entire phone.
This is exactly why I no longer connect my personal phone to our corporate mail server. If I use my personal PC to connect via VPN I also use a VM dedicated to that task.
I don’t look at it that way at all. Yes, it is definitely better to only wipe company data than to wipe the entire device – that is a given. But I don’t believe virtualization is the way to get there. Let Apple and Google figure out how to do this in their OS (and they are working on this problem)…
The problem with VMs is that now users have to manage 2 seperate inboxes, 2 seperate sets of apps, 2 seperate everythings… Do you really think anyone _really_ wants to do that? If the problem is simply being able to do selective wipes than VMs are not the solution.
With iOS 5 you can already selectively wipe email (i.e. wipe all the users company email without affecting their other email accounts). And the user still gets the benefit of having a unified inbox… That is why I think it is stupid to address this with VMs – it destroys usability to the point that no one wants to use it…
This comment couldn’t be more ignorant. If you’ve ever actually worked for a publicly traded company that must follow Sarbanes, you’d know why BYOD can be challenging to deal with, and why technologies talked about in the article can be promising.
It’s not about IT “inflicting pain”, so don’t be so dramatic. I think you watch a little too much Saturday Night Live.
I don’t work for a publicly traded company, but I do work for a 1000+ employee healthcare company, so we have HIPPA (somewhat similar constraints, at least for patient data), and we do at least attempt to follow general SOX guidelines for data retention and whatnot (and yes, I know that without going through the actual compliance process it is almost meaningless, just saying).
The point of my comment isn’t that VMs could not be a possible solve some types of problems – it is that is is an over-reaching solution if compliance is the problem you are trying to solve.
We implement a compromise currently – if you want to BYOD you have to use a device supported by our infrastructure, and you have to give the company IT department control over the device (wipe remotely, enforce certain policies, etc.). That simple – don’t like it then use a company supplied device.
So what does using VMs accomplish that this doesn’t? Essentially it boils down to partitioning data – and well that’s it really, everything else it might allow is mostly unrelated to compliance. Making it possible for companies to wipe ONLY company data and not personal data is something being worked on in both iOS and Android.
Can we please let the Apple’s and Google’s attempt to solve this problem using their already fairly good and rapidly improving corporate management tools instead of grafting on yet another 3rd party hack? It seems pretty damn obvious to me, but running a completely virtualized 2nd environment on what is already a heavily resource constrained device is not really a good idea…
So yes, I think as the OP said it is a solution in search of a problem… Call me whatever you want, but my reasoning IS based on some first hand experience. Maybe I’m wrong, but I’m not ignorant.
I think it would be more promising if stuff like Sarbanes wasn’t created by pencil-pushing bureaucrats with little to no security and operational experience.
Hey, we can all dream right?
I’m a heavy user of VM’s. I’ma developer, and I learned a long time ago that rebuilding my machine every year or so because tool A doesn’t like tool B or we suddenly have a requirement to support operating system Z is a real PITA. With a VM I can quickly and painlessly develop software that targets any platform I have a VM form. But would I run my day to day on a VM? No way. Absolutely not. I have tried it and it sucks. It’s not viable to have both development and day-to-day in one VM (as my day-today revolves around Office 2010 *no matter what* OS I’m targeting.) Any 2 VM’s running side by side on a single hot SUCKS resources like no body’s business!!! This is with a Core i5 (using chip level virtualisation) and 8GB of RAM.
On to mobile VM and emulation. Running a VM requires two things that a mobile device is in short supply of, RAM and storage space. I can easily fill up my chosen smart phone with music, podcasts and apps. It has 16GB of storage. It’s not likely that I would want to dedicate any of that space to a VM image.
But let’s get on the the real reason this is a solution in search of a problem: this is an app. This is an app that will use the resources provided by my device. If the comms on my device are compromised, this app is compromised. If we agree that we can’t use that as criteria for using this app – what is left? Because, lets face it – no one is going to allow a third party to plug in a whole new communication ECO system in to their device, however that would even work.. All that is left is a suite of “apps” on a virtual OS that are certified by the corporation and segregated from the main OS apps. Well – isn’t that just “Microsoft Works” or “Claris Works”? Build an app that integrates all the functionality you want, make it only talk to a specific server that is set up in some secure handshake.. voilà ! You have the same end point… BUT YOU DON’T HAVE TO VIRTUALISE IT, NOR DOES IT SUCK RESOURCES!!!
If this leaves you with no other thought, please let it be: smashing a walnut with a sledge hammer might open the walnut, but it also leaves little but a pulpy mess… a nutcracker might not be as sexy, but it was at least designed to solve the problem elegantly.
As a dev, I would like to have Android 2.2, 2.3, 4.0, MeeGo/Tizen, B2G and WebOS on a single device without rebooting.
It could also abstract the hardware to the point where it is trivial to make custom ROMs, not like the insane amount of effort of projects like CM.
I can boot a Linux VM in iPhone Safari with this:
http://bellard.org/jslinux/
Unfortunately the virtual keyboard does’t work though.
That site is an amazing achievement, but completely useless for any real world applications.
Even just compiling a “Hello World” application takes 13 seconds:
/var/root # time gcc -o hello.o hello.c
real 0m 13.05s
user 0m 6.23s
sys 0m 0.92s
(which is actually why he shipped his own compiler optimised for that emulator)
Edited 2012-03-06 11:59 UTC
Doesn´t it make more sense to use a container based solution like OpenVZ?
Since this is for iOS, which comes from MacOS X, which includes various FreeBSD and NetBSD bits, it would be a container-based solution like jails (which pre-date the Linux-based solutions like OpenVZ, Linux-VServer, LXC, etc).
Try explaining to someone that you jailbroke your iPhone in order to run a jail, to keep your business line separate from your personal line.
Would you need dual-SIM support in the phone, or does the VM create a virtual-SIM?