LAS VEGAS — VMware plans to bring mobile virtualization to tablets.

That’s the word from Hoofar Razavi, VMware’s mobile product management director, who met with me here at the International Consumer Electronics Show. Smartphones were a logical first step for mobile virtualization, because they’re so much more pervasive than tablets, Razavi said. But extending mobile virtualization to tablets is a “logical transition,” he said.

VMware Horizon Mobile uses a hypervisor to create an encrypted, IT-controlled work environment on users’ smartphones. The technology has not yet hit the market, but LG said yesterday that it should be on some of its phones within a few months.

The big issue for VMware mobile virtualization on tablets, as on smartphones, will be OS and device support. For now, Horizon Mobile will be available only on Android smartphones made by LG or Samsung and running on either the Verizon Wireless or Telefonica networks. Not having iOS support is a pretty big deal in the smartphone market, but it’s a much bigger deal in the tablet market, where the iPad has such a commanding lead.

LAS VEGAS — IT pros can’t ignore the International Consumer Electronics Show anymore.

Well, that’s not entirely true. IT pros can ignore a lot of it. All that stuff about cars and cameras and TVs and sound systems, while pretty cool, doesn’t really affect enterprise IT. But CES also serves as the launching pad for new smartphones, tablets and other technologies that, thanks to consumerization, IT now has to pay attention to.

Here’s a brief rundown on some of today’s CES news that IT pros should be aware of:

Microsoft shares Windows 8, Kinect details

This year marks Microsoft’s last CES keynote, and many attendees expected the company to go out with a bang. That didn’t happen. CEO Steve Ballmer, alongside host Ryan Seacrest, spent most of the time re-hashing projects we all know Microsoft has been working on for a while. But there were some tidbits of note.

On the Windows 8 front, the company is sticking to its late-February release date for the public beta. As with most Windows releases, there have been rumblings of delays, but if those rumblings are true, Microsoft didn’t give any indication. Chief marketing officer Tami Reller also said that, when it comes to Windows 8′s new Metro user interface, developers won’t have to build separate applications to run on x86-based PCs and ARM-based mobile devices.

And in more exciting news, Ballmer said Kinect for Windows will be available Feb. 1. Kinect has become mighty popular as the motion-sensing technology in Microsoft’s Xbox 360 video game system, but the company sees it as a potential game-changer for business applications — especially in certain verticals, such as healthcare and industrial design.

Droid 4, now with Citrix Receiver

Among all the announcements of new mobile devices, Motorola’s Droid 4 news should stick out for IT. That’s because the Verizon Wireless smartphone will come preloaded with Citrix Receiver for desktop and application virtualization.

Sure, Citrix Receiver is available in most app stores already, but by installing it directly on the Droid 4, Motorola is placing its chips on this method of controlling and delivering corporate apps to personal devices.

VMware mobile virtualization creeps along

VMware’s mobile virtualization vision took one very, very small baby step towards reality. One of the company’s smartphone hardware partners, LG, said it will finally bring VMware Horizon Mobile to market in the coming months.

Mobile virtualization lets IT create a separate, secure work environment on users’ smartphones. VMware started talking about the technology in 2008 and announced a few hardware and carrier deals last year, but today was the first time we’d heard any sort of official news about a release date. Our news writer James Furbush will have a full story on the state of the mobile virtualization market later this week.

In doing research for my story on yesterday’s VMware mobile virtualization news, Keith Kessinger and I came across some articles from 2008, when VMware first announced its Mobile Virtualization Platform. Some of the predictions and comments about the mobile market in those articles are pretty entertaining, either because they’re way off the mark or they’re really dated. So we thought we’d share them with you:

Srinivas Krishnamurti, VMware’s director of product management and market development … cited a prediction from Stamford, Conn.-based research firm Gartner Inc. that 50% of smart phones will ship with a virtualization layer by 2012.

We’re two and a half months away from 2012, and that number is close to 0%. Either mobile virtualization is going to set all sorts of holiday sales records, or this prediction is not coming true.

VMware has announced the VMware Mobile Virtualization Platform (MVP), a hypervisor that will run on some of the most popular mobile phones, including Apple’s iPhone and Research In Motion’s BlackBerry.

Ah, 2008, back when you could use “BlackBerry” and “popular” in the same sentence. Also, MVP won’t run on either BlackBerry or the iPhone. It’s only available on Android devices.

“It’s amazing the number of different problems we’ve been able to solve with virtualization,” Krishnamurti said. Likewise, MVP’s real potential may lie somewhere completely novel and in “solving problems we haven’t even thought of yet,” he said.

The problem then was the need to separate personal and business phones on the same device. That’s the same problem today. Three years later, we still haven’t even thought of the “problems we haven’t even thought of.” But when we finally do, mobile virtualization will solve them!

VMware is getting into the mobile phone virtualization market, but partners say the technology is way too new to know how it will affect them.

Three years later, this one’s still true.

If you want to read the full articles from 2008, here they are:

• With acquisition, VMware brings virtualization to mobile phones
• VMware unveils mobile phone virtualization hypervisor

VMware is finally bringing mobile virtualization to market, but it’s far from a slam-dunk solution to bring-your-own-device problems.

The VMware Horizon Mobile service will become available on Verizon Wireless smartphones within months, the companies said at VMworld Europe this week. Horizon Mobile is designed to keep corporate data and applications segregated and protected on personal smartphones, but issues around device compatibility and management may hamper IT adoption, experts said.

For one, Horizon Mobile will be available only on Android devices.

“You need more device and more OS support to make [mobile virtualization] valid at an enterprise level,” said Brian Katz, director of mobility at a major pharmaceutical company.

How Horizon Mobile works

Horizon Mobile relies on the Mobile Virtualization Platform (MVP), a mobile phone hypervisor that VMware introduced  in 2008. MVP creates two environments on the same smartphone — one for personal use and one for business. IT administrators can monitor, secure and deploy applications to the business environment using the VMware Horizon Mobile Manager portal.

But Horizon Mobile Manager creates Android images that admins must manage. That may be a turn off in some IT shops, because it creates a lot of overhead, Katz said.

Mobile virtualization on Android only: ‘A messy situation’

VMware has said it’s working on bringing MVP to the iPhone, but Apple has shown no inclination (at least publicly) to allow mobile virtualization on iOS. If mobile virtualization ultimately solves  bring-your-own-device (BYOD) issues, this lack of iOS support will be a roadblock, because not all end users are Android owners.

“It’s kind of a messy situation,” said Ben Schorr, CEO of Roland Schorr and Tower, an IT consultancy based in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Mobile virtualization isn’t even necessary on the iPhone or Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7. Unlike Android smartphones, those devices have monitored app stores, and the applications come with a certain level of security, said Wes Miller, research analyst with Directions on Microsoft, a Kirkland, Wash.-based consulting firm. Miller pointed out that one of the biggest complaints about iOS — its lack of multitasking capabilities — is actually an asset when it comes to security.

“The applications are incredibly sandboxed, and … that is a great security solution, even though it limits the productivity of apps,” he said. “[Mobile virtualization] is an incredibly high-charged security approach, and that’s great, but the fatal flaw is that you’re having to consider this, on Android, because the platform itself is intrinsically not secure.”

Mobile virtualization: One aspect of BYOD?

It’s not an overall BYOD option, but Horizon Mobile can help IT get more control over end users accessing corporate data and applications on Android smartphones, Schorr said.

“If you don’t give the end users what they want, they find ways to get around it,” he said. “Mobile virtualization is going to be a solution if for no other reason than to placate those users.”

Katz agreed that mobile virtualization does have some valuable uses, such as for specific projects where every employee has the same device. But overall, it’s better to try to manage all mobile devices with as few tools as possible, he said.

“Do you handle your Android devices one way, do you handle your iOS devices another way, do you handle your Windows Phone devices a third way, or do you try to find a solution to best unite all three?” he said.

Horizon Mobile device details

LG Electronics will be the first manufacturer to offer Horizon Mobile on its Verizon Wireless devices. VMware also has a mobile virtualization deal with Samsung and is working with Google to add MVP to the Android kernel.

At the conference, VMware also disclosed a Horizon Mobile partnership with Telefonica, a wireless carrier that does business in Spain, Latin America and South America.

As the bring-your-own device phenomenon grows, so do the options for separating personal and business communications on the same device.

Desktop virtualization delivers self-contained business operating systems and applications to smartphones and tablets. Technologies such as VMware’s Mobile Virtualization Platform and AT&T’s Toggle let users essentially keep two phones — one for business use, one for personal use — on the same device. And with a new release from ShoreTel, employees can securely tap into their companies’ unified communications (UC) systems from their mobile devices.

“We’re starting to see a lot of interest in companies that want to make the mobile device the primary method of communication,” said analyst Irwin Lazar, a vice president at Nemertes Research.

ShoreTel focuses on mobile unified communications

Announced this week, the latest version of ShoreTel Mobility aims to provide user-friendly mobile unified communications access. An employee downloads an app, which integrates with his or her phone’s existing dialer and contact list, and IT then provisions that device for access to the UC system.

When the employee calls a personal contact, the phone makes the call as usual. But when the employee calls a business contact, ShoreTel Mobility kicks in — automatically connecting to the VPN if outside the corporate firewall — and the user has access to the company’s full UC features.

“It makes it a lot easier to use,” Lazar said. “From a user perspective, it’s just like any other app.”

As with any bring-your-own-device (BYOD) initiative, device support is a major factor in whether a new project will succeed or not. ShoreTel Mobility supports 12 Android devices running version 2.1 or higher, Apple’s iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch, plus the latest BlackBerry OS 6 devices.

“Most of our customers used to be focused on the BlackBerry … and as Android and iPhone got more popular, this whole bring-your-own-device phenomenon got its legs and took off,” said Pejman Roshan, ShoreTel’s vice president of mobility.

ShoreTel Mobility also connects to all leading PBX systems in addition to ShoreTel’s, including those from Cisco Systems, Juniper Networks and Microsoft.

“A lot of [other vendors] have a fairly limited number of mobile devices that they’ll support, and it brings it back into their own portfolio,” said Frank Stinson, partner and senior analyst with Intellicom Analytics. “It’s not supporting the bring-your-own-device thing as well as [ShoreTel].”

The ShoreTel Mobility app does not store any data locally on users’ devices, so IT admins can de-provision employees without wiping out the personal data on their phones — a common complaint among users.

“They can containerize the app, knock out the app, put a poison pill in the app, whatever you want to call it, and not take out the whole device,” Roshan said.

Mobile and desktop virtualization options

ShoreTel Mobility is focused on keeping personal and business phone calls separate, but other approaches pay more attention to data and apps.

VMware and Verizon Wireless will announce this week they are partnering to offer personal and business segregation on smartphones, according to IDG News Service. They will presumably use VMware’s Mobile Virtualization Platform (MVP), a smartphone hypervisor that allows multiple operating systems to run on the same device — in effect creating isolated environments that users can switch between based on the tasks they need to perform.

Also this week, AT&T announced Toggle, a similar feature based on technology from Enterproid, whose Divide platform lets users create secure enterprise profiles to access on their personal smartphones.

A major problem with VMware MVP and AT&T Toggle is that, as of now, they only run on Android devices, said Mike Sapien, principal analyst with Ovum.

“Multiple platforms, multiple operating systems, multiple devices is a lot more friendly for the users,” he said.

Their go-to-market strategies may also cause issues for IT admins, who are looking to make their jobs easier, not harder, Stinson said.

“ShoreTel’s selling to the enterprise and providing an architecture to support users’ existing devices,” he said. “The carriers are coming at it from the other angle. If they’re contracting with the user, that’s kind of an administrative hassle for the enterprise.”

Desktop virtualization technologies aren’t an ideal solution, either. Reliance on connectivity and the performance of Windows OSes and apps on mobile devices are still obstacles for many organizations. As Bob Egan, managing director of MGI Research, put it at last week’s Interop conference, “Virtualization is a mess right now. … The company that figures out media support and application and OS neutrality is going to be a big company.”

Photo (cc) by Trace Meek and republished here under a Creative Commons license. Some rights reserved.

The new SlideRocket and Socialcast iPad apps aren’t the only news from VMware today.

The company is also working to make its mobile hypervisor part of the Android kernel, CTO Stephen Herrod said at the GigaOM Mobilize show, according to GigaOM.

By putting its Mobile Virtualization Platform (MVP) on every Android device, VMware would have a big leg up on competitors … if any major competitors existed. That might be a sign that mobile virtualization is a futuristic technology, and VMware is just far ahead of the curve. Or it might be a sign that nobody else thinks mobile virtualization is a worthwhile approach.

At its core, mobile virtualization is one potential solution to the problems caused by the consumerization of IT. It allows employees to keep a “personal phone” and a locked-down “work phone” on the same device, and IT pros don’t have to worry about supporting every single device under the sun.

VMware’s mobile virtualization approach comes with several gotchas, though. For starters, as GigaOM’s Derrick Harris noted, Apple probably won’t allow mobile virtualization on the iPhone anytime soon. So right out of the gate, there’s a big chunk of devices that IT can’t control with mobile virtualization.

Our Keith Kessinger got to try out VMware MVP at VMworld last month, and he pointed out other problems: the short battery life of most mobile phones, which could decrease even further when running two OSes, and the fragmentation of Google’s hardware partners, which could raise compatibility issues.

Mobile virtualization, and VMware MVP specifically, could evolve to become a real asset for IT. But for now, as Keith wrote after VMworld, “I left the show feeling like the technology is little more than a novelty.”