I often get asked about market trends and why VMware would buy Mozy and Sliderocket. I don’t usually like to indulge the speculation. However, take a look at today’s announcement on the vCenter Orchestrator Plug-in for Microsoft Active Directory and you have to see how security tools help build the foundation of a new user platform.

The VMware vCenter Orchestrator plug-in for Microsoft Active Directory allows organizations to automate the management of directory services tasks, particularly as they pertain to cloud provisioning use cases. For instance, the plug-in enables the automatic provisioning of vCloud Director organizations based on data retrieved from Active Directory.

It just became a little easier to run your office in a provider environment. You can stand up some of your own apps or use provider managed productivity apps like SlideRocket and Zimbra in a handy vCloud environment with credentials already under your control.

The new capabilities also bring to mind new risks, which I am happy to speculate about and will discuss next week in my presentation at Interop.