Red Bend bringing virtualization to mobile devices

Quite a while ago, I spoke with the executives of VirtualLogix about the use of virtualization technology to better support mobile or handheld devices such as smartphones. In September 2010, VirtualLogix was acquired by Red Bend, the supplier of a portfolio of device and software management products for mobile environments. Recently, I had the opportunity to speak with Red Bend's Executive Vice President of Marketing, Lori Sylvia. She wanted to bring me up to date on what the company is doing and also to trumpet the fact that at this point over 1 billion devices are being supported by the company's software.

What Red Bend has to say about Mobile Device Management Software

Mobile Software Management encompasses a set of technologies and business processes that enable the management of software assets in mobile devices throughout their lifecycle.

As the pioneer of Mobile Software Management (MSM), Red Bend Software offers the industry’s leading software products for managing mobile software over the air. Together, Red Bend’s innovative and award-winning products create an end-to-end solution for independent, centralized and consistent control over managing all types of software and applications on any device, any platform, anytime.

Red Bend offers the only holistic solution for gathering information from the device, analyzing that data, using it to formulate decisions and then performing management actions on the device.

Snapshot Analysis

When I first learned of what VirtualLogix was doing, I thought it was a clever way to deal with the smartphone multi-processor environment. Most smartphones have an applications processor, a digital signal processor and some even have separate graphics processors. The introduction of virtual processing software into the mobile device environment would offer a number of important benefits including the following.

• It would be possible to reduce the number of processors and other support components in a device. One faster processor could do the work of many separate processors current found in handheld devices
  • Fewer components means lower overall cost
  • Fewer components means smaller devices
  • Fewer components means extended battery life

• Developers could create software for a mythical single type of processor even though what might actually be used would be the lowest cost processor available that was supported by the virtualization layer. This would reduce the time to market and also reduce overall software development and support costs.

Developers could create software for a virtual environment and let a virtualization layer deal with all of the processors. This would make it possible for a developer to use the same code regardless of the actual procesors found in the device. This could reduce the time and costs of development dramatically.

The next logical step is being able to manage the devices remotely and deliver software and updates over the air. This, of course, is what Red Bend is doing.

We're going to hear a lot more from this company and its OEM partners.