As I was watching John Furrier’s interview with Constellation Research CEO Ray Wang at SAP’s Sapphire event last night, he brought up the new wave of enterprise executives, all waving around their iPads as tech candy.  True enough, iPads are becoming a common accessory amongst the corporate elite, and as this trickles down to every employee in the building, demands on software distribution, compatibility and security will only increase.

It was then Wang noted the needs of the social enterprise as they pertain to mobility, a focal point for Sapphire this week.  Standards around developments like HTML 5 are digging out channels for developers and publishers, carving the path towards this very mobile future we envision.  But a great deal needs to be done along the way, from every member of this industry.  One very proactive area is SaaS, where platforms can be manipulated more readily than end-user devices, always anxious to evolve.

VMware’s stayed ahead on this charge, being among the first to launch a cloud solution for the tablet market.  With a steady update of mobile apps, VMware’s able to deliver Windows on the iPad, with a virtualization platform for Android precluding.  Facilitating the middle ground for the enterprise and mobile devices, VMware’s launching a new product for businesses to fashion their own app management hub.  It’s a way of delivering the public cloud to the private sector, with a simplified interface that organizes and manages apps for admin and end users.

An admin can add as many apps as needed to the Horizon manager, customizing a portal for employees.  As an end user, an employee gets a structured gateway to third party web apps, which could include Box[.net] or Facebook, or even VMware’s own Mozy or SlideRocket.  It may seem like a “corporatized” approach to permission-based web apps, but there are some benefits for end-users.  As a secure portal, they only need to log-in to the Horizon App Manager itself.  From here, any app within the management hub is immediately available without additional login.  What VMware is looking to do is collapse disparate silo apps into a single enterprise identity, accessed through a web browser on any connected device.

“It’s unique in that we keep a consistent sync of users and groups, leveraging the enterprise connector,” Noah Wasmer, Director of Advanced Development at VMware explains during a walkthrough of the new product.  “The software runs on VMware products, and you’re configured against the existing directory service.  You can sync users in groups, see the different users, and see the apps each end user has access to.  It’s a combination of corporate and personal apps.  They can connect payroll, Adobe Connect, Google Apps, and so on.”

What this gives businesses is the option to build app catalogs for the enterprise.  They can on board their own third party apps, as long as they adhere to the necessary standards, such as provisioning APIs and the like.  Wasmer considers it a lightweight way to bridge existing private cloud directories into third party apps, in a controlled environment, even making reports for end-user activity, associated to their IP address.

It sounds a bit like an enterprise big brother, and in some ways it is.  But this browser-based portal is targeting employees that need to access Facebook for brand-management, not necessarily to update their family vacation photos.  It’s not something to be pre-loaded with firewalls on employee devices (yet).  The plethora of enterprise-related apps that will find refuge in such catalogs makes the Horizon App Manager a mini marketplace all its own, looking to challenge similar services for the enterprise.

VMware’s also looking to price out its competitors in this arena, specifically Salesforce or Oracle, which offer traditional identity access tools that can get pricy, or may have limits around app support.  At $30/user/year, VMware is looking to make this scalable for the enterprise as well.  “We really outlined this vision of connecting the private cloud into the public cloud, in a way that the enterprise is comfortable with–on their terms, Wasmer says.  “It extends their existing security model, and is also an important asset for VMware in pushing their own services.”

With this type of app economy developing within the hybrid cloud, everyone gets a step closer to the open axioms needed for IT consumerization.  The idea that the cloud can be compounded in order to provide cloud management services is something of a paradox, but one that makes perfect sense within that very lofty cloud we speak of.  The same methods that have taken over hardware processes continue to take over virtual services, granting opportunities to new services just to keep up.  VMware’s been proactive in this space too, its most recent development being the Cloud Foundry.  Though not directly associated with each other, Wasmer notes that the Cloud Foundry is something VMware is excited to bring into the Horizon App Manager.