EMC World 2011: VMware to virtualise mobile phones

VMware is working on extending virtualisation to mobile handsets, according to the company's chief executive (CEO).

During his keynote at EMC World 2011, Paul Maritz claimed we were now living in a world that had moved on from the PC and needed to address it accordingly.

"We are moving into the post PC era, not that laptops and Windows are going to go away, but they are just going to have to share the stage with other devices," he said.

"IT can no longer assume it only has to deal with windows laptops."

Maritz believes virtualising the mobile devices will help keep companies safe through the trend of consumerisation of IT and revealed VMware was working on a solution.

"We will be complementing [this trend] with a number of technologies for the post PC era," he said. "We have interest in experiments, one called MVP, which [looks at] how do you provide a secure environment on smartphones."

"Instead of businesses buying phones [for employees], give users virtual phones and have two phones on one phone."

Maritz said this would allow for two numbers, two set of policies and enable users to have their handset of chopice without putting the business at risk.

"If in their private life, they install a hacked version of angry birds, it wouldn't be reading the contacts of the business and transmitting them [like current devices]," he added.

However, regardless of how well the experiment goes, the CEO remained realistic as to whether users would embrace this new way of mobile usage.

"Will users like that schizophrenic way of business? We are not sure, but we are going to find out," concluded Maritz.

For all the news from EMC World 2011, check out our round-up here.