Today is the Hitachi Information Forum, held in Santa Clara, CA.  During the event, Hitachi announced a powerful new server product, as well as its goals around promoting a 3D take on growth in this sector: “up, out and deep.”

One factor towards achieving deep integration for Hitachi’s cloud efforts is partnership, which is where the company is headed.  News of the Midmarket CIO Forum sponsors and participants shows an array of interested companies, including Hitachi, Google, IBM and Dell.  The idea behind the event is to foster face-to-face communications with industry leaders, which consist primarily of partners or potential partners for the companies involved.

It piqued my attention, as it reminded me of the VCE coalition that was started by executives at Cisco, EMC and VMware.  The benefits of their partnership include a powerful set of tools to offer clients and partners, in addition to a well-funded research tank for figuring the best way to takeover the cloud.  We had extensive conversations with VCE executives in recent weeks, with one such interview available for viewing here.

It’s a mixed attitude of partnership and friendly competition that has driven much of the very recent business development behind the current course of the cloud industry,, with several leaders seeking growth in this specific manner.  VMware, for one, took a great deal of pride in its growing army of supporters at the VMworld conference a few weeks back, despite the budding tension of “coop-atition” fostered by the 3Par bidding war and a quickening acquisition pace.

Oracle brewed a few storm clouds, however, angering many of its partners and clients alike with announcements made at its OpenWorld conference last week.  Having staked a large claim on the cloud space, Oracle is being seen as throwing too much of its weight around.

Nevertheless, partnerships still generate a great deal of positivity towards the cloud’s future.  This morning brought the news of one partnership that resulted in an acquisition, with IBM bringing Blade Networks into the fold. Blade investor Juniper Networks  sees a number of benefits for the newly forged partnership with IBM, outlying the strategic nature of the space’s growth and appeal in the short- and long-term.