Red Bend aims to bring mobile virtualization and BYOD to the masses

The idea behind mobile virtualization technology is quite simple: Platform developers take a smartphone and add some type of a virtualization layer to it to provide users with a personal/corporate all-in-one device, which will help with corporate BYOD initiatives. Corporate data can be protected from personal applications, and users can keep their personal information private and free from corporate management and company policies.

But mobile hypervisor technology can go beyond just a separation of corporate and personal. It can help further segment personal use cases from one another and even make it possible to have service from multiple carriers on the same device. Who knows where it can lead?

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Quite a few companies are already making a play in this area, and it should come as no surprise that virtualization giant VMware is one of those looking beyond server and desktop virtualization. VMware has been fairly vocal about bringing its mobile virtualization platform to market, and we’ve seen demonstrations of its technology — now called Horizon Mobile — at VMworld events.

The company is working on a Type-2 hypervisor that currently operates on top of Android. Going this route means VMware won’t have to work with every device manufacturer to ensure support, but it does keep it from enjoying Apple’s iOS market. For now, VMware is said to be working closely with Samsung and LG to incorporate the hypervisor into their devices.

But a larger deal may be brewing with Google to get VMware’s technology into the Android OS itself, much like Xen and KVM have been able to do with the Linux operating system for server and desktop virtualization. Speaking of Xen and KVM, let’s not forget that these hypervisor technologies are also looking to migrate into the mobile market. There are a number of projects to try and port Xen and KVM virtualization to the ARM processor architecture.

Now Red Bend Software has announced its intentions for the mobile market with the latest release of vLogix Mobile 5.0, which the company calls the first mobile virtualization solution ready for mass-market deployment to consumer and enterprise smartphones, tablets, modems, and wirelessly connected devices. Unlike other mobile virtualization products, Red Bend says, vLogix Mobile is the first that can be integrated in a matter of weeks rather than months.

Unlike VMware’s approach, Red Bend Software is delivering a Type-1 hypervisor to mobile devices, which should be higher performing, require less resource overhead, and be less susceptible to malware since it should present a much smaller attack surface. Red Bend’s  solution is built from the VLX Type-1 mobile hypervisor technology it obtained from its acquisition of VirtualLogix. According to the company, the solution has already been licensed by more manufacturers to virtualize more smartphones and connected devices than all other mobile virtualization products combined — a bold statement.

“Only Red Bend has the experience in working with every leading device manufacturer, semiconductor vendor and mobile operator to drive the adoption of new mobile technologies into more than 1 billion mobile devices,” Yoram Salinger, CEO of Red Bend Software added. “While others are working on science projects, the key is to align closely with customers and partners and to build a reliable and scalable product, and that’s what we are delivering with vLogix Mobile.”

As a mobile virtualization platform, vLogix Mobile 5.0 provides expanded management capabilities and an extensible architecture, making it easier and faster for manufacturers to bring virtualized mobile devices to market. It also allows virtualized devices to be continuously managed over the air using Red Bend’s device management, software management, and analytics, as well as firmware over-the-air (FOTA) updating, which is currently used to manage more than 900 mobile device models.

According to the company, vLogix Mobile has been designed to be standards-based. It supports the pre-standard implementation of the new Virtualization Management Object (VirMO) standard proposed by Red Bend in the Open Mobile Alliance Device Management (OMA DM) Working Group. Red Bend claims that this is a critical step in ensuring that OEMs, mobile operators, and enterprises avoid the costly end-to-end control points that are typically found in today’s server virtualization market.

Today, it doesn’t feel like an ideal solution to put a hypervisor on the smartphone because of the real or perceived performance hit and the lack of power with current devices. However, over time there should be a number of things to help minimize these performance issues. Smartphones will continue to mature and improve both their usage of and the amount of memory and processing power contained in each device. And companies will continue to innovate mobile hypervisor platforms to create specially developed applications that take advantage of a mobile virtualization environment.

I’m ready! I’m just waiting for the industry to catch up. What about you?

This article, “Red Bend aims to bring mobile virtualization and BYOD to the masses,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Follow the latest developments in virtualization and cloud computing at InfoWorld.com.