Cloud automation service provider Skytap announced the addition of two new cloud orchestration and configuration routing features to its Skytap Cloud lab manager today, with an aim of pushing up it a notch ahead of the rest of the market. Its competitors include Lab Manager and VMLogix.

The first addition is a a cloud orchestration interface that lets network administrators deploy multi-tier applications that dictate the order in which VMs load in a deployment after any of these virtual machines shuts down and then reboots.

From today’s announcement:

“For example, a configuration may require an Active Directory server to power up first, followed by the database server, the Team Foundation server, then the load balancer and finally the web servers.”

The second and more interesting feature the update introduced is configuration routing. This allows users to replicate a traditional “server hub/spoke”  in the cloud in just a few clicks via the Skytap interface; an otherwise difficult operation, according to chief marketing officer Sundar Raghavan. The new feature replaces the need of replicating software across multiple teams and VLANs, thus solving the issue of syncing the software stacks each of them is using.

Skytap is one of the companies that’s pushing the trend of more and more complex and rounded-out virtualized environments.  Liquidware is another example. The company yesterday announced a new data analytics service that NetApp with Liquidware Labs Stratusphere in order to allow customers to optimize their virtual desktop environment.  It can be used to determine loading and usage patterns.

Security is also playing a big role in the cloud, and major cloud service providers are becoming increasingly aware of this. Google received the SSAE 16 certification for Google Apps and the Google App Engine late last week.