Virtualization no silver bullet for Macs or mobile

In 2006, Apple’s Intel-based Macs opened the door to running Windows via desktop virtualization; suddenly users could have their personal Macs and business PCs in one box. It’s a big reason, I believe, that Mac market share has continued to grow faster than overall PC market share for the last five years. The shift to Intel and the accompanying ability to run Windows gave people the security blanket they needed to make the switch.

A couple years ago, remembering that history, virtualization vendors were talking about doing the same for mobile devices, hoping for a “have your cake and eat it too” scenario. The mobile platform vendors showed little interest, so the concept faded except for the notion of running Windows apps on an iPad using a Citrix Receiver, VMware vSphere Client, or similar virtual desktop client. But now it’s back, as the triumph of BYOD has given vendors a new selling point: “Don’t worry about those locked-down OSes and the effort it takes to go native on them. Just convert them into Windows PCs through virtualization, at least for your corporate data and services.”

In this view, virtualization is IT’s silver bullet to render impotent the consumerization-of-IT trend, or at least to keep the bulk of it outside the corporate firewall.

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EMC VMware, Citrix Systems, and Wyse are all making noises again about virtualization on mobile to run Windows on iOS and Android devices. MokaFive is also aggressively selling its managed virtualization product, mainly for running Windows on Macs. They don’t mean user-oriented virtualization, such as the user-managed Parallels Desktop and VMware Fusion desktop virtualization apps for Mac OS X, the OnLive Desktop cloud service for iPads that lets you run a Windows Office cloud instance on an iPad, or the large variety of remote desktop apps and virtual network computer (VNC) apps for the iPad and Android for running Windows or Mac OS X desktops on a tablet.

What the vendors are now pushing is not the use of virtualization to supplement mobile devices and Macs with support for legacy Windows apps that are otherwise unusable on the bring-your-own and choose-your-own platform favorites. Instead, they’re promoting the notion that IT can push aside that native OS and make those alien devices into panes of glass into their Windows monocultures. In that case, just make the Mac user install a Boot Camp partition for Windows and boot into it; you then have a Windows PC you can manage like all your others.

Virtualization as the enforcer of the Windows monoculture Like most areas of contention within consumerization, the issue isn’t a simple one — it’s not a matter of whether virtualization is good or bad. The real question is whether IT is looking for a silver-bullet approach to essentially neutralize the point of the consumerization phenomenon, which is to let users use the tools they find most comfortable and effective for them. That’s not what the vendors and receptive IT managers are discussing.

The notion trying to gain currency encourages bypassing iOS, Android, Mac OS X, and Linux on a user’s device and forcing them into a Windows-only environment for all corporate use. A common selling point is disallowing all connection between the personal (non-Windows) and business (Windows) contexts, not on extending Windows with native capabilities or vice versa.

I got that message loud and clear when speaking with MokaFive CEO Dale Fuller, a former Apple exec who likes Macs but knows what his IT customers desire is more Windows. I wanted to know how his clients’ users were taking advantage of the Macs in their work. Fuller didn’t know because that wasn’t what the businesses preferred users to do. They wanted instead to keep users in a Windows world: apps, data, and access.

So why bother? If you’re essentially closing off the native capabilities of a nonstandard device, why go through the effort of supporting that device? Worse, why tell users you’re open to diversity when you really aren’t? They’ll know you don’t mean it, and those motivated enough will find their own ways if they can. It’s better to say, “No, we support Windows only on the desktop and BlackBerry (or whatever) on mobile. That’s the way it is. Sorry.”

Why virtualization is a sensible but partial strategy for Macs (and Linux) I kept pushing Fuller for specific instances of how his clients use MokaFive to run Windows on Macs, and he came up with the example of execs and travelers to be able to bring one laptop with them, with the personal side segregated from the business side. Several analysts I spoke with cited that same rationale as the prime reson execs are increasingly owning Mac. That’s a perfectly understandable situation, especially where security and highly standard processes are big issues, but it’s not a BYOD use case. It’s a “here’s how you can do work when you’re not at the office” example, or a “here’s how we let you lug around just one laptop when on the road” convenience. If those are the reasons for using a product like MokaFive, just be honest about it.

In reality, most apps accessed by employees in business are Windows-only, so Windows virtualization is a must for Mac (and Linux, for that matter) users. Execs who want MacBook Airs for their travel-friendly design typically work with Office, a browser, and Exchange or Notes — all of which a Mac handles nicely, notes IDC analyst Bob O’Donell. It’s also what many Macs in business are used for. It’s a user experience benefit, not an application-functionality one.

Many other Macs are used in niches such as advertising, design, media services, visualization, and app development where Mac tools are often better than their Windows counterparts. But most employees stick with Windows, even where they have a choice, because that’s where the apps are, O’Donnell says.

Perhaps as more employees use Macs, we’ll see more business apps that don’t have Windows counterparts. We’re not anywhere near that day today, though that’s the direction businesses should be going: seeking meaningful activities better done on Mac OS X than Windows beyond the usual creative categories. Why? Because as in any monoculture, you lose when you don’t have a diverse gene pool.

Although Mac-only business apps are rare, there are examples of different, perhaps better software “genes” to explore. Apple’s new iBooks Author is a great example of a Mac-only tool with significant potential for remaking reports, manuals, and other booklike content (for iPad distribution, in this case). Apple’s Keynote is a much more creative presentation tool than PowerPoint, so it could help differentiate your sales presentations. Karelia Software’s Sandvox is a far more intuitive HTML authoring tool than what you find in Windows. Omni Group’s OmniGraffle Pro diagramming tool and OmniFocus visual ideation tool are unmatched on Windows. They also have iPad versions, as does Apple’s Keynote.

Virtualization has a limited role in mobile Mobile is a different story. There is no Windows version of a tablet that has any real usage, so there’s no tablet legacy to gravitate to as there is for PCs. Even smartphones lack such legacy. For instance, the once-standard BlackBerry was never about apps; rather, it was about communications, which is pretty much the same across the major mobile platforms as it is for desktop platforms.

There’s no corporate standard to virtualize in the mobile context. The closest you get is running Windows VDI clients on an iPad to access legacy apps — though they aren’t designed for the tablet environment. However, even with the UI mapping these tools do, it’s not a viable experience for your primary tablet usage. Windows VDI on a smartphone screen is just painful. While you should have native apps and Web apps on iPhones, iPads, and Androids, Windows VDI should serve as a last resort only: for apps whose infrequent and/or mobile usage doesn’t justify creating (or buying) a Web or native mobile version.

I’ve heard from several IT pros that applications such as ERP run Windows only, so they either can’t support users’ mobile devices or can support only mobile access via a Windows VDI or other remote client. That’s simply not true, says Thomas Grassl, who runs SAP’s mobile and desktop marketing group and uses a Mac himself. In fact, he says SAP’s application design approach is “mobile first where possible,” given how much many ERP users travel. Yes, power users in accounting or HR need a Windows PC to do many of the sophisticated ERP functions from SAP’s Windows app — just as such users need the Windows version of Microsoft Excel because of its Visual Basic capabilities not available in Microsoft’s Mac or cloud versions. But most of a company’s ERP base is using ERP functions available in mobile clients or Web apps, or both.

SAP has about 30 native mobile clients for iOS, Android, and BlackBerry (not all apps are available for all mobile OSes), plus some specialty functions for Windows Mobile devices. SAP has no native Mac apps, but Mac users can access CRM, reporting, and many other functions through any of the popular Web browsers, as can Linux users and even Windows users who don’t have a native Windows app, such as when working from a home PC. SAP’s main competitor, Oracle, also offers some mobile and Web clients. The notion that the use of ERP means you can’t work from a Mac or mobile device is simply not true for most ERP users.

Any strategy around imposing a Windows (or other) back end onto mobile devices through virtualization is a bad idea. If the goal is to provide both back-end-secured data and a common development effort, it makes more sense to go with Web apps that self-optimize (using CSS, dynamic HTML, and libraries such as jQuery) based on the device being used. Alternatively, you could take advantage of the ability in Android and iOS to create hybrid apps that work with native wrappers around a Web app for deeper, more dynamic use of native device capabilities tied to a common back end for logic and data management.

Virtualization technology also makes sense in mobile to create separation between personal and business contexts; users can switch to a business “partition” whose apps and data are separate from their personal apps and data, and manageable by IT. Several products that do this are already available or coming soon, from companies such as Antenna Software, Cellvox, Citrix’s OK Labs Unit, and Enterproid. This style of virtualization doesn’t extend the Windows monoculture, but it does deal with the more critical issue of managing a dual-purpose device in a way that honors both the individual and corporate contexts.

Monocultures are bad IT has driven for standardization and consistency for several good reasons: easier management, easier deployment, and faster time to market for development. But a monoculture — of any sort — reduces your flexibility, narrows your scope of action, and leaves you vulnerable to a disease or equivalent systemic failure. Remember the Vista debacle? If Microsoft hadn’t remedied that messy OS with Windows 7 in a relatively short order, companies would be stuck with an aging XP or moving users to a confusing replacement.

Think of how many established products you know suffer the effects of such inbreeding, until they finally fall with a thud as a new option becomes available: Unix by Linux, Lotus Notes by Exchange, the original System 7 Mac OS by Windows 95, QuarkXPress by InDesign (itself now also on an inbred decline), Lotus 1-2-3 by Excel, WordPerfect by Word (another one suffering from inbreeding’s effects), BlackBerry by iPhone, and dBase by SQL.

You see the same effect in any monoculture, where successive generations get worse as new ideas are ignored and flaws left unfixed, as the incentive to evolve is lacking. Heterogeneity — a cornerstone of consumerization — is messier because it’s more complex, but it’s healthier and more apt to provide an option you need when you need it.

The opposite of a monoculture — randomness — is not the answer. You want managed diversity for your technology, just as you do for people and suppliers. Virtualization’s proper role is to help different technology species coexist where they otherwise might not, not to clearcut the technology forest for one species of tree.

This article, “Virtualization no silver bullet for Macs or mobile,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Read more of Galen Gruman’s Smart User blog at InfoWorld.com. For the latest business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.