During the Cloud Connect conference held today, a most notable event is the latest team-up between Dell, Opscode and Rackspace.  The trio offered a live demonstration of the first fully automated provisioning of a multi-node OpenStack cloud, as a result of a 7-month joint effort of more than 50 organizations for the creation of an open and standard cloud operating system.  It’s among the latest developments in corporate collaboration towards the open cloud, a trend that’s creating branches of shared networks for expedited innovation.

“The efforts by Opscode and Dell to automate the provisioning of OpenStack Compute clouds can help enterprises and service providers, who are deploying OpenStack today, get up and running quickly and efficiently,” said Jim Curry, General Manager of Rackspace Cloud Builders, providing services for OpenStack. “It is amazing to see how the OpenStack community and technology is advancing rapidly through industry collaboration and important contributions by open source community members.”

In the last days Dell announced an upcoming lineup of new 2nd Generation Core laptops, maintaining its PC development even while exploring the tablet scene.  It’s a balance other PC giants like HP are walking as well.  The devices will feature the Series 6 chipset, a component that will be extended to other Dell laptop models including the Inspiron, and XPS line. Dell referred to a new super-slim notebook that will be launched in the near future as well, offering little further information.

Racskspace has been pushing its OpenStack initiative quite a bit lately, having launched late last year.  It’s first big initiative took full advantage of an emerging tablet market, anticipating open cloud products in this area early on.  Moving on to the Windows platform, OpenStack got bearish on its update pipeline.  The most recent platform launch delivers broader access for integration, inviting a new wave of potential customers.  Below is an interview from TheCUBE with OpenStack lead Jim Curry (see our other cloud-related interviews on SiliconAngle.tv).

Among other important names at Cloud Connect 2011 include Stoneware, that will provide a demo as well of its webNetwork, a provider of web-enabled delivery of the data center through a desktop built inside a web browser. Unlike many cloud technologies that use VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructures) as the basis of their cloud service, webNetwork leverages web technologies to create a scalable, cost effective solution that can deliver a web desktop to a growingly diverse device market.