Virtualization and Cloud executives share their predictions for 2015.  Read them in this VMblog.com series exclusive.

Contributed article by Dror Nadler, SVP Sales & Strategic Alliances of Cellrox

2015 – Mobile Virtualization becomes a Reality

For over a decade now the focus has been virtualization in the data center which then emerged to software defined data center and private cloud. The motivation to virtualize desktops, servers and storage has been cost saving and will likely be the main driver moving forward. Mobility on the other hand, despite its ubiquity and the main role it plays at work and our personal life is still a greenfield when it comes to virtualization. There were few unsuccessful attempts in the past to virtualize mobile devices mostly because they were trying to impose same virtualization approaches that were successfully deployed on servers. Mobile devices do require a more innovative virtualization approach to make it work. Reason why we should all regain confidence in mobile virtualization is due to companies like Cellrox, which developed the ThinVisor technology; the ThinVisor is a tiny abstraction layer residing at the kernel level of the device, it has negligible impact on the device performance while running multiple virtual mobile instance on it. Most importantly it turns mobile virtualization into reality.

We all understand the basics of virtualization, when you decouple the functionality of the operating system from the physical device it resides on great things will happen; you can initiate multiple virtual instances on a physical device, customize each one of them, move them around and completely isolate them from one another. Mobile virtualization due to its characteristics will finally allow us to preserve our privacy, regain control and protect what matters on our mobile device. 

Next year will likely emerge as the year where mobile virtualization will become reality. New mobile devices from few OEMs embedded with virtualization technology will become available. 

New use cases leveraging mobile virtualization will become available to mobile virtualized device owners.. how about a secure wallet instance that has all of your payment applications and nothing else on it but yet has exclusivity to use the NFC adapter. Any application that may reside on the device but isn't part of your wallet won't be able to access the device NFC which is used as a main form of payment as it will be disabled. How about having a device that has two instances, one looks like your regular smart phone and the other is a stripped down instance that only has your dialer, contacts and camera... I know there are bunch of you out there that would like to get your life back from time to time but not willing to give up all the new functionality permanently. You can now simply turn off your smart phone instance at night and weekends and only have your ‘basic phone' instance running. Want one more... well how about having two different phone lines associated with a single device with a single sim card, each phone line associated with its own dedicated virtual instance.

Organizations will be able to effectively protect your company brand, IP and critical assets by migrating their employees to an isolated hardened mobile virtualized environment. In the corporate world there are benefits beyond security.. given the ability of the virtualization layer to impose HW controls, corporate will finally be able to keep non-work related data off the corporate network and by doing so potentially save cost and increase productivity. Simply put, the corporate virtual instance will be the only one allowed to connect to the corporate WiFi while the other instances will be forced to use the carrier cell network while on campus.

Another interesting area worth paying attention to in 2015 is the new potential synergies between mobile virtualization and IoT.. here's one quick example.. user will be able to port their virtual mobile instance from their device to the car infotainment system. All the user content and applications would be become available while in the car and could either be wiped out or stay permanently on the infotainment system.

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About the Author

Dror Nadler, SVP Sales & Strategic Alliances of Cellrox, brings 20 years of global leadership experience in driving adoption of emerging technologies in the marketplace, building strategic partnerships and deploying sales strategies resulting in accelerated revenue growth.

Prior to joining Cellrox, Dror was the Vice President of Global Sales Engineering for Rapid7; a Boston based Information Security Company, where he focused on driving business growth, global expansion and operational efficiencies.