This week Puppet Labs announced that it received $30 million in funding, Panorama9 introduced a new alert system for IT departments, and  Nirvanix teamed up with Intel. We also learned the specs of the upcoming Xbox 720, the cloud-powered Microsoft console that will take over the living room.

Data center automation specialist Puppet Labs announced a $30 million strategic investment from VMware. The capital will be used to extend the two companies’ preexisting partnership, and integrate Puppet’s software with VMware’s core management line-up.

Over in Denmark, another cloud automation startup had big update this week. Panormama9 introduced Perfect Pager, a new service that supplements its software with the human touch.

Panorama’s IT abstraction framework takes care of dozens of mundane tasks normally carried out manually by the geek department, including monitoring. Perfect Pager extends the system’s existing notification capabilities by allowing users to input the contact information of their admins, and have Panorama’s support staff call them when a technical problem arises.

Nirvanix also had big news this week. The company announced that its hosted storage network will become available on the Intel AppUp SMB Service, an MSP-centric hybrid cloud offering. The bundle includes an Intel-powered server and a separate storage appliance that are managed by the client’s service provider; what the end user gets is access to a catalog with apps and value-added services, such as Nirvanix’s storage solution.

The final update comes from Microsoft’s domain in the personal cloud. Earlier this week a popular gadget blog leaked the technical specifications of Durango, the temporary name of the company’s upcoming gaming console and living room content portal.  The client will feature an 8-core x64 processor, a powerful GPU that can deliver up to 1.2 trillion operations per second, and extended support for threading.