Most discussions about virtualisation tend to focus on its wider impact on the enterprise market. But there are software vendors out there producing more personal tools, and some of these are worth keeping an eye on.
As both a fan of virtualisation and a compulsive tinkerer, I’d like to share with readers some of the more useful products that I’ve come across. Virtualisation can be a pretty odd concept to get your head around unless you’re a bit of a geek, so vendors have been wary of explaining the gory details. They try to dress the concept up in supposedly more user-friendly metaphors, but mostly they end up doing more harm than good.
A good example is Trustware’s BufferZone. I remember trying it when it came out in 2003, only to be totally confused as to what on earth it was actually doing. It promises to isolate “any program, download, or file from your operating system, thus preventing system corruption, sensitive file loss, and identity theft”. The blurb for the enterprise version isn’t much better, where apparently it works by “centrally controlling and deploying BufferZone clients and policies to the endpoint”.
Another example is Ceedo, which virtualises applications from the desktop or a removable device. Again, it’s easy to install, looks quite cute, but is puzzling for an ordinary user to understand where its boundaries lie. When you run a Ceedo application, a little icon in the system tray changes colour to let you know you’re running a secure virtualised application. But the application looks the same. At least BufferZone puts a red border around each virtualised window.
Moka5 is an odd little application created by some boffins from Stanford University. Its LivePC Engine is based on VMware’s free player, but adds lots of clever stuff to allow networked updating and distribution of multiple virtual machines. But again it still looks and feels like a real geek tool.
But there may be hope. I’ve recently been playing around with Mojopac. This runs a full, familiar, virtualised version of Windows XP on almost any USB removable drive or device. You get access to most of the host PC’s hardware (including sound and graphics cards), can install almost any standard application, but can’t access the host PC’s data.
All these are potentially great tools. But until the vendors come up with a simple way to explain how they work, users are going to remain perplexed. And that’s bad for you, as it means that if these tools meet some of your needs, you’re going to have to do all the explaining to your staff. Have fun.
