Years ago, I considered the week leading into Labor Day as the final hurrah of the Summer and tried to preserve it for an end of season vacation to cap off the warm weather months in New England. Then my kids became school age and schools started kicking off before the holiday weekend. (Don’t get me started on this silly practice.)

Now, the tech industry is also making a habit of getting back into stride for the new Fall season before the dog days of August are behind us. One of the important annual venues for kicking off the new season of activity is VMworld.

This year’s event is generating plenty of news, especially regarding cloud-oriented acquisitions and alliances. Here’s a quick sampling:

• VMware Acquires Integrien and TriCipher 
• Verizon and VMware to Launch Enterprise-Class Hybrid Cloud Solution 
• BlueLock Introduces VMware vCloud Datacenter Service with CloudConnector 
• EMC Transforms Management of the Private Cloud, Ionix Unified Infrastructure Manager 2.0 Now in Customer Beta
• Citrix Acquires Virtualisation Firm VMLogix 

Why all the buzz surrounding this event?

Virtualization is one of the critical building blocks for creating cloud computing environments and VMware has become a key player in the cloud computing marketplace. As a result, a widening array of tech companies, service providers and channel organizations are aligning themselves with VMware. At the same time, other virtualization vendors are trying to keep pace with VMware’s capabilities and strategies.

This week’s acquisitions, alliances and other announcements are just the latest illustrations about how this marketplace is evolving and the competitive landscape is shifting.

For instance, performance and access management are pivotal pieces in a public or private cloud computing environment. This is the reasoning behind VMware’s acquisition of Integrien and TriCipher, and part of the thinking that drove Citrix’s acquisiton of VMLogix.

So, while the Dell/HP bidding war over 3Par has captured plenty of attention, other industry players are staking their own claims on a share of the rapidly expanding cloud computing market opportunity.

3Par BlueLock Citrix Dell EMC HP Integrien Tricipher Verizon VMLogix VMware VMworld