Back in February, two of the biggest players in the fast-growing cloud market — IBM (NYSE: IBM) and infrastructure leader VMWare (NYSE: VMW) — expanded their longtime strategic partnership to “help enterprises take better advantage of the cloud’s speed and economics.” Based on a recent announcement, that alliance — which was expanded even further this past summer — was more than merely an attempt to grab some business-media attention, as is so often the case when two industry leaders “partner.” The two recently signed a significant new deal with privately held Clarient Global.