VMware put an Android in your Android, so you can VM while you VM

by Matthew Rogers on February 15, 2011 at 06:30 PM
So apparently VMware heard you like virtualization (or at least, that corporations do), so it made an Android virtual machine that can run inside Android's own Dalvik VM. The idea being, of course, that busy corporate types could play all night on their nifty new Android superphones, but still be able to dive into a minimalist, business-first environment with one tap when it's time to go to work. Judging from the video that our cohorts at Engadget posted earlier today, the whole thing seems to be pretty awesome, even if it is only working on an LG phone for the time being.
But the ability to run a second Android instance inside your already-running Android OS isn't just for dividing work and play; the system that VMware's cooked up is secure enough to be functional for enterprise use. While inside the VM, all data is encrypted, and the whole thing can be externally or even remotely managed. The idea of a managed system might dredge up bad memories of using an enterprise-managed BlackBerry (if you've ever had the displeasure), but the upside in this case is that it's not your whole phone -- just a VM that's stored on it.
Another nice thing about this is that it won't necessarily have to kill off space you may otherwise use for personal apps, since according to the VMware rep in the video, the guest OS can be housed either internally or on the SD card, and the demo was running surprisingly fast off the SD card.
While it's all well and good that Android phones may be one step closer to completely replacing BlackBerry phones in enterprise environments, the really interesting thing that the VMware rep touched on was that this isn't a one-trick-pony sort of virtual machine setup. When this tool is finished and available on more devices, we may be seeing Androids running instances of just about anything in the next few months, and that's what really gets me excited. Tags: android, apps, cellphones, mobile, productivity, security, utilities, virtual machine, VirtualMachine, vm, vmware