Catching up on some reading, I came across this piece http://news.cnet.com/8301-19882_3-57388112-250/zynga-readies-private-cloud-to-run-partners-games/ that discussed Zynga and their adoption and readiness for private cloud implementation on their gaming platforms. If you are not aware of Zynga, the elevator pitch is they build games played on social media sites and smart phones.   

So why does it make sense for Zynga to launch a game developers environment when it could potentially give someone the tools they need to actually become a competitor?

The concept is similar to next-generation hosting in that Zynga is leveraging its expertise as a specialist in developing games to help give other gamers a means to come to market quickly.  ‘Leading’ as opposed to ‘protecting’ has been a good model in the past (Linux, Java) and the gamer world is no different.  And Zynga obviously believes that if you hide complexity from people, it enables them to do the ‘fun stuff’ and not worry about how to build a cloud, rather how to leverage it. 

Zynga is doing for game developers what Amazon did for storage and cloud developers, making it easy to get up and going and becoming a more complete provider to the gamer community.  I think this is a good strategy.   This philosophy rings true across the infrastructure world; network automation is vital to hiding the complexity and allow users and network operators alike to accelerate business ideas.