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Hewlett-Packard’s Matthew Morgan started a briefing with Channelnomics on the release of HP LoadRunner-in-the-Cloud by stating the company had been a leader in software performance testing for more than 20 years.

Morgan, a senior director of product and solution marketing in the HP software division, quickly qualified his statement without prompting: Mercury Interactive – a software company HP acquired in 2006 – had been the performance-testing market leader, and HP, by extension of the acquisition, shares its legacy.

What HP is announcing today is the availability of LoadRunner-in-the-Cloud, a software performance testing platform available to partners and end users to test a variety of applications – hosted, on-premise, custom and mobile – with a pay-as-you-go service. Performance testing, Morgan explained, is critical to ensuring applications developed by partners can stand up to the rigors of field use.

“Organizations that do not have robust performance testing may face application delivery delays or risk performance bottlenecks if they are unable to get timely access to testing resources,” Morgan said. “LoadRunner-in-the-Cloud allows partners to deliver cost-effective, on-demand access to leading performance testing in the cloud.”

The need for performance-testing and assurance applications or services is critical, as demand for Web and mobile applications increases and the suppliers of those apps expand beyond rigid independent software vendors. LoadRunner-in-the-Cloud is intended for companies with less than $500 million in revenue or, as Morgan explains, a small startup that lacks resources to a moderate sized software company.

As more companies – including VARs – develop custom apps and mobile apps the need for performance testing will be critical. What would make HP’s LoadRunner-in-the-Cloud more interesting is if it had public benchmarks and certifications to validate app testing.

Application testing for performance and security is of growing interest to the big vendors. IBM bought Ounce Labs for security-code testing. It’s also investing in tools and resources for application development, including last week’s acquisition of Worklight.

Dell is looking to replicate the formula pioneered by IBM to become a portfolio company. Last week it hired John Swainson, the former CEO of CA Technologies, to develop and oversee a software division. The intent is to build software offerings to complement its hardware and professional services capacities, and give Dell a weapon to compete against HP and IBM.

HP has invested, as well, with its acquisition of Fortify and the $4.5 billion it paid for Mercury Interactive in 2006. While IBM is a software company, HP has spent billions on various acquisitions to build a portfolio of software offerings. It now has many security, cloud management, storage and management tools. The most recent prize: database and enterprise search specialist Autonomy, which it picked up last summer in a $10 billion deal.

Here’s the thing about Mercury Interactive: It’s pretty much fallen off the radar since the acquisition. With each software acquisition, HP more or less buried the Mercury brand in the portfolio of software and hardware offerings. Mercury was all but forgotten when HP bought Palm for its WebOS in 2010 for $1.2 billion.

Even during the Autonomy acquisition last summer, when HP was trying to justify the expense and show its software ambitions, Mercury was barely a footnote. Despite a dozen or more software acquisitions, HP has failed to establish itself as a software player. It remains a hardware powerhouse.

Morgan – a Mercury veteran from its heydays in the 90s – tells Channelnomics that Mercury has thrived under HP’s ownership. It continues to add customers and capabilities, making it a valuable piece in the HP software phalanx.

HP bringing out LoadRunner-in-the-Cloud is more than just another cloud service. It’s HP showing it has code muscle and is intent on finally showing it will be a player in software market.

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