There have been several interesting update this week from the cloud computing industry, and open-source innovation was one of the biggest highlights in the last few days. HP, Gluster and Dell all had an OpenStack announcement, representing a milestone for the companies involved.

Starting with Gluster, the open-source storage solutions provider unveiled Gluster Connector, its first major update to OpenStack since it became a partner.  Gluster Connectors works by connecting GlusterFS to the OpenStack hypervisor, offering users more accessibility to their files and data.

Dell in turn also had an OpenStack launch of its own. The electronics giant announced the Dell OpenStack Solution, an infrastructure offering that is essentially a PowerEdge Series C server deployment powered by Cactus, the latest distribution of the OpenStack cloud platform. It also includes Crowbar, an installer that is available in an open-source and commercial version, which Dell claims will help reduce deployment time from days to hours.

Over at the virtualization space, web company   Stratus released a survey that suggests Microsoft is making big gains with Hyper-V.  According to the company VMware is used by 59 percent of the companies surveyed, compared with Hyper-V at 53 percent.  Stratus conducted the same survey last year, but back then VMware held a 78 percent market share compared to Microsoft’s 38 percent. We’ve also had an update from competitor Citrix – the firm hired three new execs, Erin Hintz, Shankar Iyer and Bob Schultz.

The open-source cloud and virtualization have been two of the most buzzing segments this week, yet, one of the biggest news pieces comes from the mobile space. China’s Alibaba Group launched AliCloud, a new cloud-based mobile platform which will be introduced to the Chiense market by the mends of July. It will be running on the K-Touch Cloud-Smart Phone W700, the first handset that will support the OS.