VMware tackles enterprise personal cloud

The public cloud and now even the private cloud have been pretty well defined. The personal cloud is somewhat fuzzier.

Typically, when people refer to the personal cloud, they mean commercial services like Apple iCloud or Microsoft SkyDrive, which provide a secure space for one user with multiple devices to store and sync files and personal apps. That’s great for individuals, but these services are starting to drive IT nuts because sensitive company files may be uploaded willy-nilly — and potentially be subject to hacking, random viewing by a family member, or otherwise exposed.

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So what if IT could deploy its own enterprise personal cloud service for employees? VMware is working on just such a solution, which offers users all the functionality of commercial personal cloud services and more, but with enterprise control.

Because it’s from VMware, you might conclude it has to do with virtualization, but you’d be only partly right. Yes, VMware View (desktop virtualization) and ThinApp (application virtualization) are essential to what VMware calls its “EUC (end-user computing) vision.” But it’s the new VMware technology now under development that looks like it will truly embrace and extend the personal cloud paradigm.

In a recent demo at InfoWorld’s offices in San Francisco, I was blown away by a VMware prebeta project called AppBlast, which provides remote access not via a dedicated client such as View, but over plain old HTTP. That’s right, when the actual product ships, you’ll be able to pop open your desktop or mobile browser and remotely use any application on any AppBlast-enabled device in your personal arsenal over an Ethernet or a 3G/4G connection. And it’s fast: The AppBlast demo included a video playing on a device in Seattle, and although frames were clearly dropping, the quality was surprisingly acceptable.

AppBlast goes beyond the features commercial services offer, but Octopus, another exciting VMware project, aims to mimic them. VMware describes Octopus succinctly as “Dropbox for the enterprise.” You get all the secure data sharing and syncing features of that popular service, except it runs on your servers instead of servers in the public cloud.

All that end-user technology is only part of enterprise personal cloud. Another part originates in the public cloud: commercial SaaS applications from Google Apps to NetSuite to Salesforce. VMware’s Horizon Application Manager, which debuted last May, already provides policy-based management for public cloud SaaS apps, so users can enjoy single sign-on and IT gets a single point of control. Perhaps the biggest benefit for IT is clean deprovisioning: When a user leaves a company that uses a SaaS gateway like Horizon, one button can revoke that user’s access to all of his or her SaaS accounts.

Horizon Application Manager extends this level of control beyond SaaS to internal enterprise applications, ThinApp virtualized Windows applications, and so on. The long-range plan is to provide identity-based management and access control for all public and private cloud services, including remote desktops, applications, and data.

Finally, with Horizon Mobile, VMware provides managed, secure virtual machines for Android smartphones. (Unless Apple plays ball and supports virtualization of iOS, VMware will have to take a different approach to the iPhone.) As with client-side hypervisors for the desktop, you can download a secure “business VM” to your smartphone, which syncs to a host maintained by the enterprise. When you’re done working the virtual machine, it disappears from the mobile client — and can be blown away easily if the device is lost or stolen. When you use the smartphone for personal applications, you’re completely unconstrained. Knock yourself out with iCloud or whatever because the business virtual machine remains isolated and secure.

As seems to be characteristic of VMware, there are a lot of moving parts here, with an overabundance of individual products and product names. But the big picture emerging from this swarm of new and existing technology has undeniable appeal: a consumerized personal cloud for users that could deliver a new level of device independence, while providing IT with a secure solution that provides granular policy-based control. VMware won’t talk about release dates for AppBlast or Octopus yet, but if all the pieces fit together properly, VMware’s EUC vision could lure many forward-looking enterprise customers.

This article, “VMware tackles enterprise personal cloud,” originally appeared at InfoWorld.com. Read more of Eric Knorr’s Modernizing IT blog, and for the latest business technology news, follow InfoWorld on Twitter.