Maureen O'Gara

Flexiant, one of only three independent public cloud providers in Europe, is refocusing for aggressive growth by bringing in new management. It has hired George Knox as CEO, replacing the Scottish start-up's co-founder and original CEO Alex Bligh, and tapped John Pocock as chairman. It is also advertising the fact that it's gotten $1.5 million in funding. Apparently that's the $1.5 million it got in November reportedly from some 20 angel investors as well as its own management. The money was earmarked for working capital as the start-up builds out its Amazon-like FlexiScale public cloud, Europe's first cloud platform launched in 2007. The company's flagship Extility software, launched in March 2010, lets service providers build their own clouds and automate provisioning. Knox says, "The strategic focus of Flexiant is changing now from developing a product and bringin... (more)

Ex-US CIO Joins Salesforce.com

Vivek Kundra, the former CIO of the US federal government, an early evangelist of cloud computing, has been hired by cloud pioneer salesforce.com as EVP of emerging markets. Salesforce snaring him is considered something of a coup. The company didn't explain what the job entails and Forbes assumes he's there as a rainmaker to make government contracts happen despite the pressure on budgets. The New Delhi-born Kundra and his Rolodex left government service and the Obama administration last August for a fellowship at Harvard conducting research at both the Berkman Center for Inter... (more)

HP Puts Activist Shareholder on Board

Activist investor Relational Investors LLC has reportedly taken a ~1% position in Hewlett-Packard and its co-founder Ralph Whitworth has gotten a seat on the inimitably dysfunctional HP board. His appointment will raise the number of seats to 14. According to Bloomberg Whitworth took advantage of the precipitous plunge in HP's stock price on August 18 when former HP CEO Leo Apotheker announced that HP was buying Autonomy for close to $10.3 billion, abandoning webOS devices and might dump its PC business, a move it nixed last month. Apparently he kept buying through September. ... (more)

Gartner Cuts Its IT Spending Forecast

Gartner has revised its outlook downward and now expects worldwide IT spending to total $3.8 trillion in 2012, up 3.7% from 2011. The researcher previously thought spending would grow 4.6% - roughly a $100 billion more - but says "faltering global economic growth, the eurozone crisis and the impact of Thailand's floods on hard-disk drive (HDD) production have taken their toll on the outlook for IT spending." It figures all four major technology sectors - hardware, enterprise software, IT services and telecommunications equipment and services - will experience slower spending. B... (more)

AMD Names Chief Strategist

AMD has named Rajan Naik chief strategy officer, reporting to CEO Rory Read. Naik, 40, was a partner in McKinsey's technology practice. His charter will embrace both the company's short- and long-term strategy development, including market opportunities, strategic partnerships and investment strategies. Read said Naik "possesses a strong track record of execution in strategic planning, product and market strategy, and operational performance. He will help ensure strategic and operational alignment across our business to take advantage of growth opportunities in lower power, emer... (more)