At long last. For some reason, the trade magazines refrained from doing a thorough test of cloud automation tools. But to make the cloud worthwhile, they are definitely needed. The marketplace was maturing slowly though, and only now the larger vendors are coming up with serious automation tools.

Smaller vendors have been showing their tricks though, and now Network World has finally picked it up and tested three of them: RightGrid (by RightScale), Control Plan Editor (Tap In Systems) and CloudIQ (Appistry). All of them have been tested on the Amazon EC2 Cloud, but they can also be used for GoGrid and Rackspace among others.

It is quite a read (as all Network World reviews are), and the lay-out is not particularly great as the methodology is described in a separate article (again, as Network World reviews always do).

Which one is best? Unfortunately, we get the boring 'depends on what you are looking for', as each product has its pros and cons. Still, a quick read reveals that the reviewers would prefer Rightscale over the rest, while CloudIQ does have the charm of having a free edition.