Skytap Expands DevOps Support With Debut of Skytap Automation Pack for IBM Rational Team Concert

Skytap Inc., the leading provider of self-service cloud automation solutions, today announced the availability of Skytap Automation Pack for IBM Rational Team Concert, a unique solution that enables IT operations and development teams to rapidly provision IBM build machines on-demand in Skytap Cloud. This advanced integration expands the flexibility of IBM’s SmartCloud Continuous Delivery solution by allowing customers to use scalable, elastic and on-demand cloud resources to meet sporadic and unpredictable demand for build machine capacity. The new offering also eliminates the capital and labor expenditures required to buy, monitor and maintain physical hardware. Skytap will be providing live product demonstrations at IBM Innovate, Booth #E114, on June 2-6 in Orlando.

“The most universal driver for DevOps continues to be speed and the time to iterate, to deploy and to get software, features, services and updates to market,” said Jay Lyman, Senior Analyst, Enterprise Software, at 451 Research. “In addition, while drivers such as cost reduction through efficiency are still significant, most enterprise and service provider organizations are viewing DevOps and the ability to rapidly iterate both infrastructure and software as a competitive necessity.”

Skytap Automation Pack for IBM Rational Team Concert

The Skytap Automation Pack is software that installs alongside the IBM Jazz Team Server. The Automation Pack continuously monitors the build request queue, and incoming build requests trigger an automated process that creates complete build environments in Skytap Cloud based on pre-defined customer templates. The Skytap Automation Pack enables on-premise IBM Rational infrastructure to connect to Skytap Cloud via a secure VPN connection over IPsec, which is dynamically created using Skytap’s AutoNetworks™ software-defined networking technology. Skytap Cloud serves as a secure extension of on-premise infrastructure, empowering customers with the flexibility to migrate additional resource elements into a hybrid cloud environment.

Benefits for software development professionals include:

  • Create identical build and unit testing environments in Skytap Cloud on-demand
  • Increase (or decrease) the number of build environments with auto-scaling
  • Collaborate with teams working in parallel on separate components of a product with consistent build environments that operate on the latest golden version of components
  • Provision fully-automated build environments, eliminating the need to worry about the underlying infrastructure and automatically creating virtual machines on the fly
  • Scale the underlying infrastructure with the growth of team, complexity, and product
  • Access virtual machines remotely via SmartClient™ or any native RDP-capable client
  • Share complete environments and creatively collaborate via publish URL capability
  • Scale resources (CPU, memory, network) up and down on-demand

Benefits for IT infrastructure and operations teams include:

  • Integrate existing on-premise IBM Rational Team Concert Server environments seamlessly with Skytap Cloud resources
  • Empower end-user teams to easily spin-up, run, and tear down complete testing environments on-demand, without IT management or intervention
  • Enforce network isolation and control on-premise enterprise user access
  • Maintain complete IT visibility and control – role-based access, quotas, notifications, and reporting

“While DevOps professionals are hesitant to abandon tried-and-true on-premise solutions, external cloud resources have proven to drastically reduce software delivery cycles and accelerate time-to-market,” said Brian White, VP of products at Skytap. “The Skytap Automation Pack for IBM Rational Team Concert combines the sought-after scalability and flexibility of a hybrid cloud with the popular IBM development tools utilized by some of the world’s leading enterprises.”

About Skytap, Inc.

Skytap is the leading provider of self-service cloud automation solutions for dynamic workloads. Skytap Cloud gives businesses a fast, easy, and secure way to create complex computing environments in the cloud. Customers can run enterprise applications unchanged in the cloud, collaborate securely with global teams, and gain unparalleled business productivity. Additionally, IT organizations maintain full visibility and control over cloud projects, align capacity with demand, and reduce costs. Enterprises can securely connect Skytap Cloud to their data centers and create hybrid clouds. Skytap is ideal for any dynamic workload including development and testing, software demos and evaluations, and virtual training. To try Skytap Cloud and learn more, visit www.skytap.com.

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