MDM: To Sandbox Or Not To Sandbox?

Most enterprises must make a tradeoff when it comes to mobile device management, or MDM, systems, because providers fall into one of two camps: those, like Good Technology, that provide a single sandbox where all corporate data goes, and those, such as MaaS360 or MobileIron, where the device has some sandboxing (for email) but most of the MDM client's work is done in conjunction with the operating system's apps and features.

The two approaches have pros and cons, and some organizations have a very difficult time deciding which route to go. Well, life is set to get a bit easier now that Verizon has partnered with VMware and AT&T has linked up with Enterproid's new Toggle to bring mobile virtualization to the market.

While sandboxing is traditionally done at the application level, the new technologies from VMware and Enterproid focus on creating partitions, using virtualization, to sandbox the entire mobile device. That allows a user to run two versions of a mobile operating system at the same time on the same phone: one for work, one for personal use.

In a video from the Qualcomm QPrize event demonstrating Entreproid's technology, you can see how a mobile user can seamlessly switch between the two "phones" and have full access to all 250,000+ real apps within each partition, as if they were the only apps on the device. We can finally allow Angry Birds to be installed in the personal partition and prevent it from running in the corporate partition. Huzzah!

While you can't get your hands on the tech until later this year, it has been discussed since 2009 and has been securing a very well-known user's mobile phone for over a year: President Barack Obama uses this type of virtualization technology on his BlackBerry to separate the highly secure apps he needs to run from the rest of the phone.

The benefits to enterprises are pretty compelling, too. Mobile virtualization provides all the advantages of sandboxing--mainly, full encryption of all corporate data and easy wiping of that data--as well as the benefits of non-sandbox-based approaches; for example, employees can use native mobile apps, such as the calendar and mail clients, without having to be retrained on a quirky interface from a vendor such as NitroDesk TouchDown or Good. There are new benefits, too, such as allowing an end user to upgrade to a new version of Android while the corporate partition stays at a corporate-enforced version.

We don't recommend you hold off on your MDM or mobile strategy until these technologies are available, since all the vendors we spoke with say that'll take a few months. But definitely keep it on your radar. I think that mobile virtualization will be a game changer for the enterprise if phone manufacturers provide devices that will support the technology. The holdup there is that the phone must have enough processor power and should be a dual-core device. Almost all the new Androids are dual-core, and this is something to consider if you provide stipends or guidance for users on device selection.