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VMware is moving up the stack with an ambitious plan to offer an IT services environment that connects the end points between the data center and the cloud.

It's a strategy that we see emerging with other vendors in the space. Virtual computing has passed the inflection point. Virtual machines are now beginning to outnumber physical servers. Without a doubt, the future of the data center is virtual.

The effects are numerous. The enterprise is witnessing a totally new app infrastructure. If you are a leader in enterprise IT you have to take into consideration the rapid acceptance of technologies such as Ruby on Rails and lightweight Web services that provide the capability to offer a Web-oriented architecture.

A recent poll found that most enterprises that have already become infrastructure-as-a-service customers worry much less about cloud security than companies that are only thinking about making the leap. But for the rest of you, security remains the number one concern when considering the cloud. If you're under pressure to take advantage of the benefits of cloud computing, but need to ensure a high level of security, here are a few companies with products and services that can help you make the move without losing sleep.

The end of Google Wave and rumors that the company is building a Facebook competitor has a lot of people talking about Google's need to get better at social. Fortune's article on Google's future growth last month, apart from highlighting absurdity a company becoming "too successful," speculates as to what Google will need to do in order to continue growing in the future. The article's authors dismiss Google Apps for Enterprise and move on to sexier fair, discussing what Google needs to do to be more "social." But it's clear that Google has big plans for the enterprise. First, of course, because Eric Schmidt has said so, but also because of the various steps the company is taking.

Today Skype officially moved Skype Connect (formerly known as Skype for SIP), its first product targeted at enterprise customers, out of beta. Skype Connect will enable business customers to use Skype over regular PBX phones or unified communication systems from Avaya, Cisco, SIPfoundry, ShoreTel and others. The announcement follows a rumor that Cisco made a bid for the VOIP company and Google's addition of voice calling in Gmail.

Skype estimates 37% of its users use the service for business purposes. Although Network World has reported that Skype for SIP was difficult to setup in the past, it seems Skype has taken some steps to improve this.

We kicked off the week last Monday with an article on improving IT worker morale. This week we'd like to get your thoughts on what changes we'll see in the workplace of the future, both good and bad. For example, earlier this month Gartner released a list of ten changes the workplace will see in the next 10 years. What do you think about Gartner's list, and what changes do you expect to see?

A new report from Forrester confirms a trend we've been reporting: enterprises are turning away from "one size fits all" organization-owned smart phone phone strategies in favor of multi-device, employee owned smart phone strategies. Of the firms polled by Forrester, approximately half are already embracing a multiplatform strategy, and nearly 60% support personally owned smartphones. Many enterprises are considering solutions to augment or replace their Blackberry Enterprise Servers. Forrester has identified the ten most important features for smart phone device management solutions, and ten vendors that offer all ten features.

It's no secret that RIM is in trouble on Wall Street as it loses out in the consumer market to Android vendors and Apple. But what about RIM's core competency, the enterprise? We've been covering the rapid adoption of Android and especially iOS in the enterprise, and the availability of device management alternatives to the BlackBerry Enterprise Manager. Is RIM in danger of losing business customers as well as consumers? We think so, but have a few ideas on what RIM can do to keep its competitive edge.

The Compact Muon Solenoid Experiment (CMS) at CERN (The European Organization for Nuclear Research) will deploy the NoSQL database CouchDB into production this summer, CouchDB corporate sponsor Couchio announced today.

CMS's Data Management and Workflow Management (DMWM) project has been testing NoSQL solutions for the past year. Simon Metson, convener of the DMWM group, gave a few reasons for the group's decision to adopt CouchDB. DMWM's experience may be useful for organizations considering NoSQL solutions.

According to a new report from Forrester, mobile development has gone from being a separate silo to being mainstream. As more and more IT departments will be called upon to create mobile applications, Forrester recommends managers and developers adopt its POST (People, Objectives, Strategy, Technology) strategy. POST was actually created for marketing and business development professionals, but the company explains how to apply it to mobile application development.

Last week Sarah Perez reported that a game called Tap Snake, available in Android Market, was actually a mostly harmless piece of spyware. I took to the opportunity to test a few of the anti-malware apps available on the market: antivirus free from droidSecurity, Lookout, Symantec's Norton Mobile Security for Android beta, and Smobile. I was also going to try SmrtGuard, but I couldn't get the app to activate before Tap Snake was removed from Android Market. Of those four apps, only one detected Tap Snake as a potential threat.