Last week marked another step forward in the evolution of cloud services as new developments upped the operational standard across every part of the stack. Zscaler, Inc. led charge with the addition of a firewall to its managed security platform that promises to keep threats outside the organization and sensitive data inside.

The value proposition is identical to that of the dedicated appliances traditionally tasked with providing that protection that the San Jose-based startup hopes to displace, except that the service doesn’t run behind the closed doors of the data center. That takes much the effort out of extending controls to the far reaches of the corporate network, which is expanding further and further beyond the traditional back-end.

Much of that exapnsion is the result of connected devices spreading to more parts of the organization in conjunction with cloud-style services taking the place of on-premise software. The shift away from traditional applications comes on the back of the increasing accessibility of modern development capabilities from the likes of OpDemand, Inc., which marked its own major update last week. The startup was acquired by Engine Yard, Inc. along with its open-source middleware stack.

Deis, as the project is known, equips the platform-as-a-service powerhouse to help its customers take better advantage of containers, the hottest trend in the development community, amid increasing competition from rivals already touting support for the lightweight virtualization technology. No terms were disclosed for the deal, one of the two startup acquisitions that made a splash in the industry last week.

The other happened on the exact opposite side of the industry in the realm of end-users, with Box, Inc. acquiring a little-known outfit called Verold, Inc. for its modeling and presentation capabilities. The technology gives the sharing giant the ability to display interactive 3D graphics without requiring a plug-in, which could make its platform a lot more attractive for companies in industries such as manufacturing and construction that heavily rely on such content.