Security is a prime impediment to cloud adoption, right? Right.

Well, Centrify has this idea: Suppose it turns any company's venture into the cloud into a lock-box - sealed off from the nasties - if anything dastardly happens the user has only its own staff to blame.

That way companies won't be forfeiting their soul simply to take advantage of the cloud's siren's song about cheap price points.

Next week at VMWorld Centrify is going to offer to isolate virtual machines no matter where they are through the security in Microsoft's Active Directory - complements of AD's policy logic - and let them take the job away from the host provider.

When its new widgetry finally arrives by the end of year - after an imminent beta of an enhanced Centrify Suite - users won't even have to think about it, the walls will be automatically erected. It'll be the same across all their servers whether public or private.

So far the security only applies to Linux-based cloud servers.

Centrify uses VMware's vCloud APIs and Amazon EC2 APIs to discover the cloud servers then does its thing. Corporate systems can also be standardized.