Provisioning Work Environments on Personal Mobile Devices

A method of provisioning mobile device comprising:

• binding a mobile application for provisioning a business mobile device to a privileged component of a host operating system of the personal mobile device, wherein the business mobile device comprises a virtual machine running on a software virtualization layer and the binding enables the software virtualization layer and a management service component of the mobile application to execute in a privileged mode;
• downloading, through the mobile application, a virtual phone image for the business mobile device and security-related policy settings relating to use of the business mobile device from a mobile management server, wherein the software virtualization layer is configured to launch the virtual machine for the business mobile device based on the virtual phone image;
• and
• removing the virtual phone image of the business mobile device without affecting use of the personal mobile device external to the virtual machine, wherein the management service component is configured to prevent the user of the personal mobile device from terminating the management service component.

A mobile device configured to support a virtual business mobile device, the mobile device configured to at least:

• bind a mobile application for provisioning a business mobile device to a privileged component of a host operating system of the personal mobile device, wherein the business mobile device comprises a virtual machine running on a software virtualization layer and the binding enables the software virtualization layer and a management service component of the mobile application to execute in a privileged mode;
• download, through the mobile application, a virtual phone image for the business mobile device and security-related policy settings relating to use of the business mobile device from a mobile management server, wherein the software virtualization layer is configured to launch the virtual machine for the business mobile device based on the virtual phone image;
• and
• remove the virtual phone image of the business mobile device without affecting use of the personal mobile device external to the virtual machine, wherein the management service component is configured to prevent the user of the personal mobile device from terminating the management service component.

A non-transitory computer readable storage medium including instructions that cause a processor of a mobile device to at least:

• bind a mobile application for provisioning a business mobile device to a privileged component of a host operating system of the personal mobile device, wherein the business mobile device comprises a virtual machine running on a software virtualization layer and the binding enables the software virtualization layer and a management service component of the mobile application to execute in a privileged mode;
• download, through the mobile application, a virtual phone image for the business mobile device and security-related policy settings relating to use of the business mobile device from a mobile management server, wherein the software virtualization layer is configured to launch the virtual machine for the business mobile device based on the virtual phone image;
• and
• remove the virtual phone image of the business mobile device without affecting use of the personal mobile device external to the virtual machine, wherein the management service component is configured to prevent the user of the personal mobile device from terminating the management service component.