VMware ThinApp, one of the most recent products from the company With the ever-growing overlap between our personal and professional lives, keeping business separate has become a high priority. In order to do so, many of us have multiple email addresses, bank accounts, social profiles and mobile phones. VMware, a company that began as a research group at Stanford University, aims to change this and simplify the process of compartmentalization. This sort of convergence also makes for an interesting trend that has been accelerated with the rise in popularity of cloud computing.

VM stands for “virtual machine,” which is essentially a computer that has a software component but no physical machine or hardware. VMware’s Horizon Mobile, which has recently been adopted by Verizon and Motorola, allows consumers to use the native operating system on a phone for personal tasks, and then switch over to a separate operating system (on a virtual machine) for business. All data on the VM is encrypted and exists on a virtual private network, so employers maintain control over data and apps and can turn off the VM remotely at any time with the flip of a switch.

While convenient, this process is not as simple as it sounds. Installing a virtual machine on a wireless or mobile device requires the cooperation not only of the service provider, but also the manufacturer because the VM must be physically installed on the device. There are also numerous technical obstacles in the way of putting virtual machines on mobile devices. The limited memory, battery life and processing power of mobile phones make virtual machines complicated to run because they require booting two operating systems at once.

Setting aside the technological difficulties, there are some issues involving politics, including the fact that some companies don’t exactly play well together. For instance, if an employee uses an iPhone but his or her company uses the Android OS, Apple would have to agree to allow the virtual machine to be installed on the phone (which, as we know, could be incredibly difficult to achieve).

The entrance to the VMware headquarters at 3401 Hillview Avenue in Palo Alto, California VMware CTO Stephen Herrod says that the company has already begun negotiating with Apple and that he firmly believes that Apple “will want to collaborate on helping put a more manageable corporate experience in the iPhone.” However, Simon Crosby, the former CTO of Citrix and a founder of VMware rival XenSource (acquired by Citrix and renamed XenServer), says otherwise. Crosby calls the project “a complete and utter waste of time” and says that Apple will not comply anytime in the near future. Setting aside the ongoing word-war between executives at both companies, their flagship products are considered similar by many who observe the market, including many end users.

For example, both are classified as hypervisors. A hypervisor is basically a hardware virtualization method that permits multiple operating systems to run on a host system. The term hypervisor is interchangeably used with the term virtual machine manager (VMM) and is named so because in the hierarchy of system management, it resides on a level above a supervisory application. This means that a user really isn’t using the full processing capabilities of his or her local system, but in essence accessing a server remotely. In turn, this removes the burden of advanced processing from the local system, but does require significant bandwidth to prevent latency and a host of other issues related to performance.

Hypervisor diagram Not surprisingly, many criminal enterprises have taken advantage of hypervisor-based technologies to create simulated computing environments in which the end user is unaware of his or her immediate observation because all actions are being recorded on a server remotely. This also includes numerous hypervisor keystroke logging applications which -- outside of law enforcement, national security and illegally spying on family members -- have no reasonable justification for their creation. A hypervisor-based Trojan is exceptionally difficult to detect -- beyond the capabilities of most average personal computing users -- and also a reason why some companies (notably Apple) are hesitant to work with companies like VMware. This is somewhat ironic because the term hypervisor can also be used to describe the graphic user interface displayed by a cloud computing service including Apple’s iCloud.

Setting aside security considerations, which VMware and XenServer address by implementing both rigid physical and virtual security measures around their servers, numerous questions arise around technical proficiency of the two platforms. For example, because Citrix has a longtime love-hate relationship with Microsoft, XenServer operates at an optimal fashion with servers using Microsoft and Linux based technologies. VMware tends to integrate better with non-Linux platforms. XenServer is known to respond faster because of its use of a minimal hypervisor.

Xen running NetBSD and three Linux distributions Outside of performance differences, many enterprise clients use XenServer because it has a much lower license cost compared to VMware. To offset this perceived marketing disadvantage, VMware has recently acquired a number of virtual software applications including presentation software company SlideRocket. VMware has started to integrate such acquisitions into its platform so that users gain seamless access to office functionality without paying additional fees for business software which has traditionally skewed cost-benefits analysis against VMware.

The integration of virtual environments with virtual production applications is continuing at a rapid pace with the increased popularity of cloud-based computing. This is an evolutionary paradox in that the entire personal computing revolution was about empowering users through the use of stand-alone devices. This means that the value proposition of platforms like VMware and XenServer is being redefined by the preferences of end users -- they want immediate access to their content regardless of their physical location and without always having to use traditionally heavy client office applications.

Naturally, this sort of positioning makes for a strange reality that was impossible to visualize just a decade ago. Imagine a business presentation created on a PC using Microsoft Office on a remote Linux server, edited on an Apple desktop, and being saved on a data iCloud from the commands on a remote Android phone.

Sometimes, truth is indeed stranger than fiction.