According to Hyperic's announcement Thursday, two months after launching CloudStatus for Amazon Web Services (aws.amazon.com), Google App Engine is the second major service to be supported by real-time, health and performance monitoring solution CloudStatus. Hyperic plans to add additional cloud services in the coming months to its free, open-source CloudStatus service.

"Monitoring helps maintain the health and performance of any application, including those powered by App Engine," Google App Engine product manager Paul McDonald said in a statement. "We are excited to work with Hyperic to provide additional transparency to our service's real-time performance."

According to Hyperic, App Engine monitoring allows customers to obtain up-to-the-second performance perspectives on network connectivity from inside and outside the App Engine platform. CloudStatus uses App Engine-specific management plug-ins to collect data of major App Engine infrastructure including DataStore, Memcache and global network connectivity.

Hyperic chief executive officer Javier Soltero said cloud computing is allowing businesses to use and offer applications on a scalable and affordable, borrowed infrastructure, but it is essential that these businesses be able to use the cloud with transparency. "We're thrilled to be working with vendors like Google to define the next generation of monitoring and management tools needed to assure performance and reliability for applications running in the cloud?and in the process help cloud computing realize its full potential."

Hyperic has also released the first cloud-specific management plug-in for its flagship product, Hyperic HQ, to extend the monitoring and management capabilities of Hyperic HQ to App Engine users.