There were a few big updates this week, and the most buzzworthy was probably a disclosure from a VMware exec that we could see Project Octopus launch sometime during this month’s VMworld. A number of new details have been disclosed about the upcoming product as well.

Project Octopus is the internal nickname of a Dropbox-like service that differentiates itself by being much more enterprise-centric. Security is a big emphasis and it’s available as both a cloud service and an in-house solution; VMware is pushing the latter much harder, according to the company’s VP of end user products.

Just as notable is that Project Octopus is not meant to be a standalone offering. It will serve as the lynchpin of a virtual environment powered by Horizon Application Manager, which will include the cloud locker as well other services from VMware and its partners.

Over at eBay, the wind is blowing in the opposite direction from the virtualization giant. The retailer is realizing an ‘exit strategy’ from VMware, and OpenStack apparently is playing a very big role in this plan. The company is using an implementation of the open-source cloud OS to develop and test applications, but at the same time it’s also leveraging technology from Nicira (which VMware acquired last month.)

In the private cloud, Boingo Wireless bought out Cloud Nine Media, a provider of ad-sponsored WiFi.  It offers a free internet connection across more than 6,000 locations in the U.S in exchange for the rights to run ads before a user gets access to the service.

Another big item this week was the story of a hacker who managed to breach the iCloud account of a Gizmodo writer and as a result all of his Apple devices and even his publication’s Twitter account. The MO: social engineering, a re-embodiment of Kevin Mitnick’s infamous method of choice several decades before the cloud even reared its head.