Rick makes an important point when he highlights the connection between converged infrastructure and cloud.  Whether it is Cisco/Vmware/EMC VBlocks, HP Converged Infrastructure, IBM Cloudburst or similar platforms, the goal of these products is to simplify and accelerate the virtualization of data centers to enable IT to better pool and share resources across multiple workloads and applications in order to improve cap ex, ope ex and business performance.  In my view, cloud builds on virtualization but is distinct from virtualization in that it adds a vital services-centric approach to the way resources are allocated to workloads.  Cloud requires a sophisticated view of services that spans the full stack of network, server, storage, hypervisor, management, middleware and applications -- in a way that allows them to be managed in a unfied manner using standardized, policy driven, automated. This is a major extension of responsibility for systems management tools and admin staff.  I'm not too worried about the systems management staff and vendors running out of things to do.  I think they are going to be plenty busy as management becomes the critical differentiator of hardware solutions as well as the interface for optimizing the way that services and resources are matched in real time.