In a recent Forbes article by Tom Kemp, “When Virtualization Meets Mobile,” many challenges and solutions for mobile virtualization are discussed. Whether it is for security, privacy, or just the convenience of carrying only one device, mobile virtualization is certainly becoming a valid option. Still, mobile virtualization faces some challenges to becoming mainstream. The market, as well as the workforce, needs to be aware of such challenges. We believe that a great mobile virtualization solution should:
- Keep the device’s native performance (graphic, battery, CPU) on all personas and not only on the private persona.
- Keep the native user-experience by allowing notifications, smart switching, links and sharing (when permitted), and the same look and feel of all personas.
- Support more than two personas. Users can benefit from personas for their kids, gaming and social networks, in addition to their business and private personas. Why limit them to just two?
The virtualization solutions mentioned in the article are sluggish, and can host a different version of the operating system. This leads to a bad user experience, and is limited to two personas. Plus, running a full, extra operating system may consume more energy than only using one.
The other alternatives that were discussed in the article are containers and application wrappers. These solutions are having issues that weren’t explained such as:
- You cannot wrap any application, especially the native ones (email, calendar) and apps that need direct hardware access (phone dialer, intense graphics using a graphics processing unit).
- You cannot wrap third party apps – unless you strike a deal with the vendors and as a result, enterprises can’t take full advantage of the app selection in the market.
- Containers require re-compilations of the apps with a special software development kit which enterprises try to avoid.
As a result, users are requested to use non-native apps, and the solutions are not as intuitive for the user. Cellrox can solve these real challenges with a virtualization technology that was designed and built for mobile from the ground up and addresses all of the issues mentioned above. No performance lost, full separation for security, native UX and multiple-personas (not just two), which can indeed achieve safe and easy-to use mobile virtualization. See a demo here!