LG Electronics and VMware have formed a partnership intended to “help enterprises of all sizes improve security and control sensitive corporate data while enabling more flexible access via employee owned mobile devices.” The initial work will focus on enabling LG smartphones to securely run a work account in isolation from a personal account, on a single mobile device. Solutions using VMware’s virtualisation technology are expected to be available on LG devices in 2011. In a statement, the handset vendor said that “the enterprise and SMB markets are a key area of focus for LG,” and the company is also targeting growth in the smartphone sector, where it is weak in comparison with its global handset performance, using platforms including Android and Windows Phone 7.

According to Stephen Herrod, CTO and senior VP of R&D at VMware (pictured), “the reality is that today’s employee-owned mobile devices are often more advanced than corporate offerings. As a result, the agile enterprise is looking to embrace new end user computing models that allow users to work on the devices they love.” The flip side of this is the need to ensure that all devices that can access sensitive corporate information are managed properly, to secure against unauthorised access and data loss. The company provided a supporting statement from Humphrey Chen, executive director of New Technologies at Verizon Wireless, who said: “We’re seeing interest from Verizon Wireless customers in the area of mobile personas, which allow a personal mobile phone to be leveraged in a professional setting in a secure way that is IT-approved. The kind of virtualisation VMware offers helps to make this happen, and we’re evaluating ways to help our customers achieve this.”