The post-PC era has its complications. Love your smart phone? Well, you may work for a company that adopted the Blackberry circa 2008. That creates a problem. It’s often the only mobile device that is synced to the company network. So what does that mean for people? Two phones – that iPhone you love and the Blackberry that has all that work on it.

VMware thinks that virtualization is the answer to this double phone lifestyle and is introducing a new version of VMware Horizon Mobile that allows for over the air provisioning to separate work and personal information.

It’s an automatic set up. But it is limited to specific mobile devices which run the Android OS. Samsung and LG are the two that have agreed to OEM the technology.

But Randy Bias, founder of  Cloudscaling, brings up a good point: people want choice. They want to have control over their own phone.

Bias tweeted:

It’s a good question. What about Apple?

VMware says it is feasible to virtualize the iPhone and it can be done. But it’s a matter of licensing and that could be a task in itself.

Still, there is a need for this technology. And it fits with the further adoption of smartphones and tablets.

In addition to the mobile virtualization, VMware is announcing new enhancements to its virtual desktop infrastructure and the launch of its single sign on for managing the provisioning of identity across devices.

Here’s what I wrote about VMware’s play into the single sign-on world when it acquired TriCipher last year:

VMware is challenging Microsoft with a stack that moves enterprise from client-based apps to a virtualized and multi-tenant world.

To do that you need simple app integration, a cloud infrastructure and security.

In this respect, what interests us is the acquisition of TriCipher, which VMware announced today. TriCipher provides OpenID services with MyOneLogin. In March, we wrote about how OpenID will transform the enterprise ecosystem. The acquisition proves how this is playing out.

The acquisition fits into VMware’s Spring platform, which it touted as an on-ramp for IT to launch apps. The apps on Spring leverage the pooled resources that come with a virtual infrastructure. They can migrate from there to a cloud infrastructure. User name and passwords do not provide adequate security for apps in this kind of environment. MyOneLogin helps fill that gap.

Services like MyOneLogin provide infrastructure for security authentication markup language  ( SAML) integration and single-sign on with multi-factor authentication. It positions VMware as an identity provider. With TriCipher, VMware can become a hub that keeps track of updates, new protocols and the other issues that come with keeping up to date with federated identity technicalities.

With the services in place, VMware can host third-party apps much like Google Apps Marketplace, which also supports OpenID. On that kind of platform an enterprise customer can also become a service provider. It serves as a platform for adopting SaaS technologies, fast becoming a fixture in the enterprise. Customers, be they employees or others, will be ready to buy without concerns about registering new user names and passwords. As we said in a previous post, it’s like a club: You join once. That’s it.

Services Angle

This is post-PC era. We’re living in a time where the mobile worker has to be connected to the network but separated, too, as our devices are blurring when work starts and stops.  It makes mobile virtualization inevitable and single sign on a logical way to manage apps in a services oriented world.