The focus in the cloud turned to platforms last week, the highly scalable kind built to support the world’s largest enterprises. Red Hat Inc. set the ball rolling with the launch of a new version of its popular OpenStack distribution that promises to provide exactly the kind of elasticity required for the task.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform 7 is based on the most recent “Kilo” iteration of the project and packs an experimental automation tool that removes much of the manual work previously involved in provisioning resources to help customers scale their implementations more efficiently. It also doubles as a setup wizard to streamline the initial installation.

Red Hat’s new utility shares that purpose with the cloud deployment manager that Google rolled out for its infrastructure-as-a-service platform the next day in a bid to make it easier for developers to configure the resources on which their applications run. Its command-line interface enables operational parameters to be implemented in templates that can be centrally updated when workload requirements change.

Google shares that focus on accommodating shifting operational needs with General Electric Co., except the latter is targeting only one particular kind with its rivaling public cloud: industrial applications that rely on its equipment. To address the fast-evolving needs of the organizations operating that machinery, the company last week revealed plans to extend its platform beyond pre-packaged managed services to providing on-demand infrastructure for processing industrial data.

Its strategy is akin to the one IBM Corp. is pursuing with its SoftLayer cloud, which targets a similar niche market, namely organizations that are already using its products. Both are taking on much better established rivals such as Google in a bold gambit that has the potential to pay off tremendously if executed correctly.

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