Virtual mobile infrastructure is emerging as a tool for enterprise mobility as companies want to give access to corporate data without any footprint on the device. In this report, we detail the market segment and players, and provide an objective analysis of the technology.
3. this to change in the next 12 months as VMI gains traction in the government vertical and then bleeds into the commercial space. This will be
through acquisitions since VMI requires significant engineering knowledge and time to develop transport protocols for virtualizing data on devices
that have highly volatile connectivity.
Select VMI players
Company Founded Headquarters Employees
Hypori 2012 Austin, Texas 30
Nubo Software 2011 Airport City, Israel 14
Raytheon Trusted Computer Solutions 1994 Herndon, Virginia 63,000 (Raytheon)
Remotium 2012 San Mateo, California 20+
Trend Micro 1998 Tokyo 5,200
Sierraware 2010 Sunnyvale, California 20+
Source: 451 Research
Hypori: Network security software firm Hypori was founded in 2012 by CEO Justin Marston. The company targets the defense, intelligence and law
enforcement verticals. It came out of stealth in August 2014. Hypori's Android Cloud Environment is in use by the US Department of Defense. Hypori
has also worked with the US Army to move to commercial mobile devices, as well as the US Air Force's Research Laboratory. The VMIfocused
vendor has raised $13.8m in venture funding from multiple investors, including Green Visor Capital.
Nubo Software: Founded in 2011 by CEO Israel Lifshitz, Nubo Software launched its VMI product in August 2013. The company claims to support
3040 users per VM with 4GB of memory, and in testing was able to handle 30,000 concurrent users on one physical server. Nubo is bootstrapped
to date, but is starting to explore raising funding in the next few months.
Raytheon Trusted Computer Solutions: After working with government organizations on VMI for several years, Raytheon Trusted Computer
Solutions commercially launched Trusted Access: Mobile in May 2014. As part of the cybersecurity arm of Raytheon, this VMI offering builds on the
company's line of products from its acquisition of Trusted Computing Solutions in late 2010. These offerings fall under Raytheon's Intelligence and
Information Systems business. Trusted Access: Mobile also provides a thin client to run on iOS devices.
Remotium: Cofounded by security researchers from Immunity Inc in 2012, Remotium focuses on VMI. Its Virtual Mobile Platform was launched at
RSA in February 2013. In July 2014, Remotium landed Hitachi Solutions as a reseller. In September 2014, Macnica Networks also came on as a
reseller. Unlike competing VMI providers, Remotium is primarily focused on the commercial market. Investors include Draper Nexus Ventures and
CyberAgent Ventures.
Trend Micro: Trend Micro's Safe Mobile Workforce was first offered in mid2014. Unlike other VMI firms, the company provides MDM and mobile app
management alongside VMI. Safe Mobile Workforce targets Android, iOS, Windows Phone and Windows RT.
Sierraware: Sierraware was cofounded by the CTO and VP of engineering at Menlo Logic, an SSL VPN firm acquired by Cavium in 2006. In addition
to VMI, the company offers an embedded mobile hypervisor for Android on top of ARM's TrustZone targeting government and defense, as well as
commercial devices. SierraVMI targets the commercial enterprise space. The company claims to be able to support 10,000 users with a dozen
servers, with installation and setup taking hours.
Takeaways
A key tenet of enterprise mobility is to limit the amount of data on the mobile device – virtual mobile infrastructure puts zero data on the device. In
addition to zero footprint for corporate data, once a session is ended, the connection to corporate backend servers is turned off until re
authentication. Mobile apps do not need to have their own security, and any and all app data and traffic is secured. Any app or service update is
done on the server and is displayed immediately to the device.
However, there is some lag and a slight degrading of user experience with VMI. In most cases, though, it is so minimal that it could be unnoticed or
similar to lag experienced with native apps on a mobile device, and users will be hardpressed to differentiate the two in deal environments.
While MDM is gaining traction and awareness, no EMM technology has really tipped the market. At a time when data going to mobile devices is
rising, the emphasis on DLP will be a key argument for VMI in the enterprise. The ability to quickly provision devices with the same 'image' will play
well with IT. And the ability to have a silo specific to work apps managed by IT in the most stringent way – without impacting the use of the same