iPad demand drives enterprise development

Beverley Head
Tuesday, 26 October 2010 16:38

Business IT - Networking

Organisations are under growing pressure to allow iPad access to enterprise data according to virtualisation specialist VMware. In response the company will this quarter launch an iPad application allowing IT managers to monitor existing VMware installations, and in the first half of 2011 release tools that will allow any device - including iPads - to have secure access to any application (including cloud based applications) as part of VMware's Project Horizon.

Speaking at vForum, a virtualisation conference in Sydney which drew 2,500 people to the keynote sessions this morning, VMware chief technology officer Dr Steve Herrod, said that a suite of tools would be delivered as part of Project Horizon which would allow IT managers to establish policy settings which would determine who could access which data and which applications regardless of the computer platform they used.

'This gives IT more control because you go through their authentication and security services,' he said. Restoration of control is an increasingly important issue for IT managers who are to some extent seeing their command eroded as business units in large organisations explore what cloud computing alternatives to in house IT services.

At the same time end user computing devices, such as iPads and smartphones are appearing in enterprises, leaving CIOs to grapple with issues such as security and data leakage.

VMware Australia vice president Paul Harapin said that pressure is also coming from the top with CEOs demanding iPad access to enterprise data. 'I have seen four CEOs in the last three weeks who want access for the iPad,' he said.

Instead of encouraging CIOs to develop a siege mentality and attempt to batten down the hatches to prevent consumer technology and cloud services penetrating the enterprise, VMware's approach with Project Horizon seems to be to develop tools which can give some level of control back to CIOs. According to Dr Herrod; 'We are working on tools that allow you to tie security policies across internal and public clouds, and secure a virtual private network between private clouds and public clouds.'

The company is also working on tools to allow automatic provisioning and scaling.