Anyone who hasn't been hiding under a rock for the last few
weeks won't have been able to avoid the brouhaha concerning the highly
anticipated launch of Apple's tablet. Not quite as exciting to some, but
certainly more real was Steve Ballmer's keynote at CES last week, where he
showed off Windows based tablets from HP, Archos and Pegatron. At the same time there has
been an explosion of announcements on Android tablets with manufacturers such as Archos (again), Compal,
Dell, HP (again), and Motorola, offering tablets ranging in size from 5 to 10 inches. While in the UK, T-Mobile has
announced its own monster 15 inch Vega tablet that will also run Android. If this
wasn't enough Intel is pushing Moblin their own Linux-based OS at Netbook
manufacturers and have just launched the beta of AppUp Center Intel's take on the single platform application
storefront. And let's not forget Walt Mossberg’s interview with Google's VP of Engineering Andy Rubin strongly hinting that Google has RIM in its sights by announcing plans for an enterprise version of the Nexus One smartphone complete with physical keyboard and longer battery life.
A couple of years ago enterprise IT might have seen all this as
an interesting diversion and little more. But now with the iPhone, and more
importantly the iTunes App Store, expectations on application delivery to the endpoint have changed. Enterprise users now expect to be able to access both personal and business apps where ever they are. So while many of these new devices are clearly aimed at the consumer market, it would be shortsighted not to expect some of them to see service as enterprise application delivery endpoints in the near future.
This represents a major challenge to enterprise IT. Not only is there a rapidly growing array of
devices and operating systems to consider, but with the growth of single
platform application storefronts like iTunes and AppUp Center,corporate IT has lost control of the delivery channel. If
enterprise IT organizations are to stand any chance of being ready to react to
this change they will have to act quickly to consider how they meet growing
business expectations and deliver
applications across such a broad range of platforms.
We are already seeing indications that Citrix and VMware are
positioning themselves to be able to offer solutions to this question, but with
each organization’s technology background leading them in radically different
directions.
VMware's approach, somewhat predictably for a company
specializing in virtualization, is to look towards abstracting mobile phone
operating systems from the underlying hardware platform by developing a
mobile hypervisor platform. To this end VMware have already successfully
demonstrated a smartphone dual booting Android and Windows Mobile, with the
ultimate goal being to be able to run multiple Smartphone operating systems
concurrently on the same device. While VMware's stated goal for this technology
is to provide a means of isolating personal and business applications on the
same Smartphone hardware, it doesn't take much imagination to see that the same
technology would enable application developers to write exclusively for
whichever preferred Smartphone platform, leaving the hard work of delivering
the application on other hardware platforms to VMware and their mobile hypervisor. Assuming that VMware is successful in getting mobile carriers to pressure Smartphone manufacturers to adopt this approach, there is still one significant issue that is unlikely to be resolved. It's hard to imagine Apple showing any enthusiasm for any proposal that would relax it's current level of control over the iPhone. So while a mobile hypervisor could reduce the number of platforms that a developer would have to support, it would not enable compatibility across every platform.
Perhaps equally predictably, Citrix is looking to exploit
server hosted application virtualization (AKA XenApp) as a means of allowing
developers to address endpoint diversity. The message that Citrix is promoting
appears to be ' There is no need to rewrite your applications from the ground
up for every smart phone or tablet operating system and form factor. Instead why
not just adjust the application's individual window panes to match the size
screen at the endpoint and leave the rest to us’. Backing this message up Citrix has incorporated new swipe gestures into v 2.0 of the Citrix Receiver for iPhone
(their iPhone client) to provide a
better mobile experience while navigating between window panes. Citrix is
calling this category of apps that can be delivered to a desktop, tablet or smartphone, "Mobile-Friendly" applications
As a side note, it looks like the open source Xen community
is following the same path as VMware with their Xen ARM project which is aimed
at delivering an open source hypervisor capable of running on smartphone
platforms. Citrix has also hedged its bets in the mobile space by investing in OK Labs an established embedded hypervisor vendor already deployed in many mobile devices.
Right now it looks as though the short term advantage lies
with Mobile-Friendly applications. Citrix has had a client for Windows Mobile devices for a number of
years now, and has recently shipped v 2.0 of their iPhone client and released a
tech preview of their Android client, while VMware is not expected to ship
their smartphone hypervisor until sometime in 2012. At the same time, if an ISV
follows the Citrix path to deliver the application on a small form factor
non-Windows endpoint all that they need to do is to rework the GUI to fit the
display size and present the application on XenApp or XenDesktop (I already know of two heathcare ISVs that are giving this proposal serious consideration). Conversely,
if they wish to follow the path that VMware appears to be promoting their applications will require a comprehensive rewrite.
In the long-term however, the situation
may not be as clear. VMware's approach, if successful, would offer the advantage of disconnected operation, although it is difficult to assess how much of an advantage this would be given that almost every application requires some level of connectivity today, and as time moves on we should expect ever more ubiquitous connectivity. There's one other possibility that may overtake both these options and that's HTML 5. This might offer the best long term possibility for a single common development platform for mobile applications and would also allow some degree of disconnected operation without the cost or complexity of either an application hosting or virtualization based solution. It is too early to tell which solution (if any) will win
out, but I expect to see significant development in this space over the coming
year. We should also expect to see Microsoft take action to protect its market
share by coming in on the side of Citrix if it looks Windows Mobile is heading towards failure.
