Netskope exited stealth mode this week with $21 million in fresh capital and a radically new approach to taming the growing phenomenon of shadow IT. The ambitious startup offers a subscription-based analytics service that aims to provide enterprises with the insights they need to identify and control the unauthorized use of cloud services.

Netskope’s offering includes a database of more than 2,600 apps that have been assessed based on 30 “objective criteria” such as security, auditability and disaster recovery capabilities. The platform empowers admins to deploy the services that best meet their organizations’ requirement, enforce policies, and keep tabs on user activity. It provides visibility into network traffic, usage trends and even specific actions such as downloads and file shares.

Netskope entered the scene on the same day Numerify announced that it has secured $8 million in funding to accelerate the development of its product, a data integration tool designed to bring traditional business intelligence to the cloud. Set to release in early 2014, the software offers to help organizations “rapidly deliver the meaningful numbers necessary to successfully chart the course of their businesses.”

Hewlett Packard is also pushing the boundaries of enterprise cloud computing with a new app store for software-defined networking solution. Announced in conjunction with the HP SDN Development Kit, the marketplace will enable customers to conveniently deploy services in their virtualized network environments.

A couple days after HP pulled the curtains back on its latest solution, cloud provider NaviSite augmented its desktop-as-a-service offering with remote desktop services and a remote application delivery tool. The company says that the enhancements enable users to reduce licensing costs while addressing the needs of mobile workers through fine grained access controls that can be enforced at the desktop or application level.