(Here, from Between the Lines, is Mickos peering out at a Sun press conference looking for the idiot reporter who can't spell his name right. Mickos, Mickos, Mickos.)
The first hint on that strategy came out today, a technical arrangement with Groundwork to combine Eucalyptus cloud software with Groundwork monitoring.
Eucalyptus, for those who don't know, is fully compatible with Amazon's AWS cloud. Its Enterprise Edition supports VMWare emulation.
One concrete result is a Groundwork Monitor Enterprise Cloud program, for which the company is now recruiting beta testers. A less-concrete result is speculation that the two companies will come up with their own cloud stack.
Speculation is a good thing. Having people talking about your company means they will recognize you when you come calling.
Clouds still represent a risk for many enterprises, and part of Mickos' charge is to reduce that perceived risk. So regardless of what it means strategically, bringing in a monitoring solution for privately-owned clouds running Eucalyptus is a very good thing for customers.
Now let's see what he does next.