This week it’s all about cloud services, and an interesting push by IBM to get into the analytics world.

The first two developments pertain to the accelerating open-source trend within the as-a-service space, where this approach allows vendors to offer significant advantages over closed alternatives in some cases.

This week OpenLogic said it has integrated the New Relic app monitoring tool into CloudSwing, the company’s new PaaS offering. New Relic’s analytical capabilities make a significant addition to what OpenLogic’s solution provides: CloudSwing is designed to be fully customizable so that companies can optimize the stack for the apps–an objective towards which New Relic can provide some extra boost.

ActiveState, also a provider of an open-source PaaS, also joined the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards. Its new involvement with OASIS comes alongside an existing connection with Open Virtualization Alliance (OVA) that has been active for several months now.

Moving beyond the open-source movement and into the security side of the cloud, Alex Williams raised some speculations about what’s behind Amazon Web Services’ “routine upgrade” reboot. There’s a likelihood that it may not be so routine and involves newly revealed security vulnerability in Xen, which powers a sizable portion of the company’s servers. The uncharacteristic urgency of the reboot is a part of the reason it’s believed something is out of the ordinary this time.

IBM in turn is also venturing into the as-a-service industry, though from a different angle and on the usual massive scale. The company made its latest acquisition this week – a deal to buy out  DemandTec for $440 million or $13/share. The firm provides an analytics SaaS that caters to the retail industry, helping customers to understand how internal decisions impact customer satisfaction.