Hardware maker Dell’s latest two updates are both growth milestones for the companies, across more than one industry.

The first item was picked up by Wired this week, straight from the WorldHostingDays conference in Germany. Dell is expanding its open-source cloud strategy overseas, by making its OpenStack-based Cloud Solution available to customers in Britain, Germany and China via Canonical ‘s channel. While the name may not be particularly original, the things under the hood of the private cloud offering are a bit more interesting: Crowbar, the deployment tool Dell developed and later open-sourced, along with standard hardware and accompanying servers, as well as OpenStack itself.

“We know that when you’re building private clouds, you want access to a full feature set and the confidence that vendor support provides. With Dell’s OpenStack-Powered Cloud Solution, users of Ubuntu Server 12.04 Long Term Support (LTS) will be able to take advantage of the cost savings and flexibility of the open-source cloud, without the risk,” said Canonical’s Martin Stadtlerlf. He added that the Ubuntu distributor has two years of experience working with the open cloud OS, which is one of the top reasons Dell decided to award it with the reselling agreement.

The manufacturer’s other expansion may be of concern to its community. The company’s IT community site and forums, AppDeploy.com, has been renamed ITNinja. The news comes after the site officially hit the 450,000 visits per month landmark, and the update also encompasses some actual upgrades to the site. There’s a new activity feed, a rep system, a Q&A tool through which users can better communicate specific questions and direct web-based integration with KACE.

Security is another area that Dell has been digging deeper into, most recently with an $80 million deal to acquire a security software developer.