VMware and Verizon jointly announced a strategic partnership yesterday, with the intention of bringing an enterprise-oriented device security and management solution to market. Horizon Mobile, as the product will be called, will be developed exclusively (at least initially) for the Android platform, and strives to leverage VMware’s virtualization expertise with the popularity and versatility of Android. Employees as well as employers stand to gain, should this solution gain acceptance.
This is promising news for those of us who carry discrete personal / professional devices. I have a work phone and a personal phone, but I certainly know of those who have three, four, more devices that basically must be constantly lugged around.
Perhaps you’d even be willing to “share” your personal device with your employer, in exchange for the permanent lightening of your burden by a device or two. Further suppose that your company’s IT department, when offered said, “Thanks, but no thanks.” (This is certainly no stretch of the imagination, depending on the size of your company, perhaps your role/title, or other factors like how much sensitive information you carry around, and how often.) Due to any number of potential concerns of the IT department, the organization, or potentially its constituents or clients might not be thrilled about you having all that sensitive data on your very easily stolen / lost / otherwise compromised personal device.
Horizon Mobile sounds like it’s striving to be more than just a virtualization product, but rather a complete turnkey solution for enterprise IT departments, covering virtualization, deployment / roll out, recall / roll in, security, encryption, etc. If VMware can get the balance right, there could be a tremendous market to be tapped.
I do wonder, however, if the name came before or after the carrier partnership…seriously, try saying “Verizon Wireless, Horizon Mobile” three times fast.
No word at this time on whether Horizon Mobile will be available as a standalone product, nor what the associated costs will be for the Verizon Wireless Business customers who will be availed of the product. LG and Samsung are noted as initial hardware partners.
So yeah, I want!
Be warned, the video is almost 20 minutes long, and uses words like “heterogeneity”. Unless you’re as nerdy as I appear to be, save yourself the trouble; I only include it for completeness. Also, I wanted to say “hypervisor”. No context, I just really like that word.
You can watch a dumbed down version of what the heck it all means below –
