Smartphone Virtualization

Abstract

Virtualization plays a pivotal role in the success of cloud computing service models and is applied extensively in modern public and private data centers. However, its adoption on end user devices such as laptop/desktop computers and cell phones is relatively scarce, mainly because convincing use cases for client device virtualization have proven elusive so far. As smartphones emerge as the linchpin of everyday computing and communication for regular people and application download becomes a fact of life, the Bring Your Own Cloud (BYOD) problem, in which corporate employees connect their own smartphones to the corporate networks for office work, has put most enterprises in an unenvious position of making a difficult choice between corporate security and employee productivity. One effective solution to the BYOD problem is smartphone virtualization, which provides multiple virtual smartphones on a physical smartphone, and enables a user to use a highly secure but not so flexible virtual smartphone in the work environment and a less secure but more flexible virtual smartphone when outside the work environment. This paper describes the design and implementation of a comprehensive smartphone virtualization system called Brahma, which consists of a virtualized smartphone element and a virtual mobility infrastructure element, and presents the detailed evaluation results of the first Brahma prototype on a commercial smartphone.