VMWare has just unveiled a mobile virtualization platform to allow its employees to run a personal profile as well as have a separate profile for work applications. It’s a growing necessity in the business sector, and it’s warranting a great deal of development towards any-time, anywhere access.  This platform has been launched initially for Android phones, and was demonstrated on an LG Optimus Black at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, currently going on this week. While the company is still testing the software internally, the main idea is to let its employees purchase an Android phone with the utility of isolating personal applications from corporate apps.

“The goal for this product is a bring-your-own-PC type of world,” Herrod said. “So we want to move to a world where the company is not buying you a phone. Buy what you like and bring it to work and we’ll give you a way to use it in an enterprise-safe way.”

As of now, the requirement is for software to be installed on phone by the manufacturer.  It’s set VMWare looking for partners in a fashion similar to Microsoft, with LG being amongst the first.  This application can’t be downloaded from the phone, adding some security measures to the software itself. So, as an employee could bring his phone to the office, IT administrator can send an additional application over it that will appear on the home screen of the phone. Once touched, it will launch the separate corporate version of the phone, isolating the personal profile.

There will be an authority to IT administrators to control the transfer or copying of personal files to corporate version. Moreover, there will be a facility to shut off the camera, GPS and Bluetooth as well. They can also clear the data from corporate side of the phone from a remote location. It will include a VPN to securely connect to the corporate version of the phone. Trials for this mobile platform will start from mid of this year, but no updates on commercial availability are available yet.

As mobile security is becoming a crucial thing, we have also seen a few updates from some other big companies including IBM and Juniper. Recently, IBM announced its three new initiatives focused on enterprise and large-scale mobile and instrumented device security. IBM announced its first offering as Tivoli Endpoint Manager a new offering that integrates the assets acquired with BigFix into the IBM portfolio.  Another cloud company that’s rather dedicated to the mobile security sector is Juniper Networks, prototyping new technologies to seamlessly manage security and compliance challenges in mobile platforms, particularly Android.

Back to VMware, they’ve had a few updates beyond mobile virtualization, including a new a product integration with HP.  With this, they will tailor their TippingPoint Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) products to fit with VMWare’s vCloud Director packages.

“Building upon HP’s global strategic alliance with VMware, this expanded relationship is designed to deliver additional innovative security technology for a converged infrastructure,” said Alan Kessler, general manager of HP’s security products organisation, in a statement on Tuesday. “With the growth of virtualisation and cloud computing, security requirements have never been more complex and critical to our clients.”

Both companies are in collaboration for product integration from the last eight years and now they will jointly promote the HP TippingPoint IPS vController and VMware vShield solution that will allow administrators to set dynamic security policies for virtualised environments. This product will be available today and will be demonstrated at RSA Conference 2011 going on from 14-18 Feb at Moscone Center, San Fransisco.