iPad And IT Admins: VMware Jumps Into iPad Mania

This is my third post in the last ten days on the iPad in the enterprise meme and the main reason is that this meme is refusing to die anytime soon. VMware is the culprit this time. At the VMworld Europe conference on Tuesday, VMware CTO, Steve Herrod, announced about VMware’s plan for this device and other smartphones.

In my post on October 4th 2010, I talked about various iPad applications available for IT admins to manage compute resources in public and private clouds.

We will soon see another group of employees inside the enterprises who will need iPads sooner than later. They are the folks in IT responsible for managing the enterprise cloud infrastructure. There are many IT tools available on both iPhone and iPad. However, many IT folks find iPad to be more suited for their needs due to its convenient form factor. There are already many iPad apps to manage cloud infrastructure services. Some of them are

• iAWSManager for AWS EC2, Simple Database, SQS, S3, etc.
• AWS Watch lets you manage Amazon Cloud Watch through iPad
• Rackspace Cloud Pro for managing Rackspace cloud services through iPad
• Soon to be released Openstack iPad app which will let IT admins manage the compute and storage infrastructure running on Openstack

Morphlabs (See previous CloudAve coverage) added their own app to the list of apps suitable for IT in any organization using cloud based services on friday. With MorphlabsmCloud Mobile, users can easily virtualize hardware and automatically configure VMs, simplify system administration, simplify application management, manage billing, etc. from the iPad. This will come handy for organizations deploying mCloud on their datacenters.

Now VMware got the bug and they are going to release apps for iPad and other smartphones within the next one year. VMware’s strategy is not a news but this is the first time we have heard something more concrete on the topic. According to Infoworld, VMware demoed a new application for its vCenter management tools that runs on the Apple iPad.

It won’t offer all the management features of the vCenter desktop client. It has been designed from scratch for Apple’s tablet and will have the features admins are most likely to use while on the road. They’ll be able to see the status of virtual machines and whether there are any alerts, for example, Herrod said

It is not just the vCenter Management tools but VMware is also planning to leverage iPad and other smartphones to push their Virtual Desktop strategy. They are planning to release VMware View apps for both iPad and smartphones like iPhone and Android. This makes complete sense as we enter a world where every enterprise employee has one or more devices like iPad or smartphones with them. By pushing an app that could bring the virtual desktops to these devices, VMware is positioning their Virtual Desktop offering to be more palatable to these “smart(phone) enterprises”.

While writing about Box.Net’s Android application, I was talking about how Android is developing into a powerful platform which developers love to embrace

Talking to Aaron and many other Android developers, I could see the excitement among the developers towards the Android platform. Its openness and the ability to push updates without going through the censor board Apple’s approval process is a huge factor in their excitement. Add to it the access to device’s file system and the ease with which trust relationships can be built between applications leading to deeper integrations, Android clearly blows away as an ideal platform for mobile app developers. The fact that it is open source only makes it even sweeter for developers. Now that Google has understood the consequences of mindless fragmentation of the platform and started taking remedial steps, we are going to see more and more adoption of Android platform.

The Infoworld article talks about how VMware feels that Android is a suitable platform to implement full virtualization on mobile devices

Vmware is also working to bring full virtualization to mobile devices, allowing them to run multiple operating environments, much as servers and desktops can today.

For that technology, Android is its platform of choice

Clearly, Android platform is a powerful platform ripe for taking over the enterprise adoption of smartphones and tablets. In the next few years, we are going to see the proliferation of such devices inside the enterprises, completely changing the way they work. The life of IT admins inside the enterprises is going to be much different from what they have today. I have absolutely no doubt about it.

Related articles

• VMware preps vCenter management client for the iPad (infoworld.com)
• VMware preps vCenter management client for Apple iPad (macworld.com)
• VMware Preps VCenter Management Client for Apple IPad (pcworld.com)
• VMware’s plan for the Apple iPad still taking shape (macworld.com)
• iPad In The Enterprise Meme Continued (cloudave.com)
• VMware Outlines Strategy for iPad-Friendly IT (nytimes.com)
• Get your HR VP an iPad. (enterpriseirregulars.com)
• iPad In Enterprise: IT Folks Can Have One Too (cloudave.com)