With the release of its new LoadRunner in the Cloud application load testing solution, HP aims to provide the flexibility of software-as-a-service in tools that traditionally entailed substantial investments to implement.

Red Hat has announced the Virtual Storage Appliance for Amazon Web Services (AWS), which can take advantage of Amazon's cloud while at the same time offering excellent performance, the company said on Tuesday.

I had the opportunity to speak at a new security conference last week, Security Threats 2012. I presented on the topic of balancing business benefits with risks in the cloud (more on that later), but the event touched on a wide range of pertinent IT topics, provoking stimulating discussions of some of the most pressing challenges business leaders are facing.

In anticipation of offering its open-source content management software as a service, Alfresco has upgraded its namesake product to work with multiple clients and to interact with a wider range of form factors, the company announced Thursday.

External developers will be able to build much more sophisticated applications and tools for Office 365 once Microsoft releases the next upgrade of that cloud-hosted communication and collaboration suite, according to a Microsoft partner.

The two primary forms of public cloud computing, Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), are both growing dramatically in popularity. Over the last few years, the primary focus of the IaaS providers has been on offering the basic compute and storage resources required to run applications.

When Ben Fried left his post as IT managing director at Morgan Stanley and took over as Google's CIO in May 2008, he knew what he was getting into: supporting a user base full of technology experts and computer industry stars, like co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, CEO Eric Schmidt and Vice President Vint Cerf. In a recent interview with IDG News Service, Fried spoke candidly about his job and shared tips and advice for fellow CIOs, including the urgent need for tablet device strategies. An edited transcript of the interview follows.