News

VMware Acquires Trango, Brings Virtualization to Telecom Market

Virtualization market leader VMware Inc. today announced a new market direction involving the mobile telecom market. VMware will target mobile phone makers and their partners with a new bare-metal hypervisor optimized for telecom applications. The new product has been developed through the acquisition last month of Trango Virtual Processors, based in Grenoble, France.

The new hypervisor has been rebranded as VMware's Mobile Virtualization Platform (MVP) and targets an emerging growth market. Market researcher Gartner has predicted that by 2012, over half of all smartphones being shipped by suppliers will be virtualized.

Although still being evaluated by mobile handset vendors and not yet generally available, VMware MVP will eventually be embedded in mobile phones where it will perform many of the same tasks that the company's ESX virtualization software does today for servers. This includes decoupling applications and data from the device itself as well as the OS.

Currently, there are some memory and power constraints for virtualizing mobile devices. However, according to Srinivas Krishnamurti, director of product management and market development for VMware, "We don't believe that hardware is going to be a growth lock for virtualization."

VMware is touting a number of benefits for both mobile phone vendors and subscribers. Benefits for vendors include a reduction in product development time because currently, software stacks will not work across different phones and must be ported separately.

In addition, subscribers to carrier mobile services would gain the ability to have a "persona" -- consisting of profiles, applications and data -- untethered from a specific device when upgraded or replaced. Using this approach, for example, a business directory and personal directory could be instantiated on the same phone, facilitating the trend toward employee-owned mobile phones.

Although the market is still nascent and no separate business unit has been established by VMware, the announcement can be seen as another interesting competitive move by the company. Neither Citrix nor Microsoft have similar initiatives underway, although a company called VirtuaLogix currently offers many similar capabilities.

About the Author

Tom Valovic is a freelance technology writer.

Featured

  • Microsoft Offers Support Extensions for Exchange 2016 and 2019

    Microsoft has introduced a paid Extended Security Update (ESU) program for on-premises Exchange Server 2016 and 2019, offering a crucial safety cushion as both versions near their Oct. 14, 2025 end-of-support date.

  • An image of planes flying around a globe

    2025 Microsoft Conference Calendar: For Partners, IT Pros and Developers

    Here's your guide to all the IT training sessions, partner meet-ups and annual Microsoft conferences you won't want to miss.

  • Notebook

    Microsoft Centers AI, Security and Partner Dogfooding at MCAPS

    Microsoft's second annual MCAPS for Partners event took place Tuesday, delivering a volley of updates and directives for its partners for fiscal 2026.

  • Microsoft Layoffs: AI Is the Obvious Elephant in the Room

    As Microsoft doubles down on an $80 billion bet on AI this fiscal year, its workforce reductions are drawing scrutiny over whether AI's ascent is quietly reshaping its human capital strategy, even as official messaging avoids drawing a direct line.