Skytap Inc., the leading provider of self-service cloud automation solutions, today announced the addition of new cloud computing capabilities that deliver on enterprise demand for simplicity, security, visibility and control.

Recently recognized as a “Best of VMworld 2011” award winner in the public and hybrid cloud category, Skytap is building upon its product leadership by introducing advanced notification services, self-healing automation capabilities for robust virtual private networking, and support for Open Virtualization Format (OVF). Together, these new features enhance Skytap Cloud’s ease of use for business users, while offering the visibility and control required by IT professionals.

“Cloud computing discussions have advanced from what is the cloud and how will it impact my business, to understanding what applications are ideal candidates for different cloud models,” said Cameron Haight, Research Vice President, Gartner, Inc. “What we are observing are that many enterprises are leveraging public and even hybrid cloud models for low risk scenarios that still require placement flexibility such as development and testing, product demonstrations and technical training.”

New capabilities in the Skytap Cloud include:

Advanced Notifications

Skytap’s advanced notification service provides real-time alerts when end users or groups reach configurable utilization levels of cloud computing capacity. Examples include administrator defined thresholds for available storage, compute and networking capacity that is assigned as quotas to specific end users or teams. Notifications can also be set based on total virtual machine hours or the number of total hours that any given virtual configuration has been continuously running. Real-time notification rules are intuitive to set up and flexible. Businesses benefit from increased control and visibility on cloud usage and costs, and can proactively avoid the “end of month surprise” bill. Automated notifications ultimately help to align end users and IT operations on the common goal of being resource efficient and to control costs.

“Skytap’s notification capability provides Informatica with the visibility and control we need to effectively manage hundreds of different Skytap Cloud users within our organization,” said Gaurav Lall, director of technical marketing, Informatica. “With notifications, Informatica is proactively alerted about virtual machines that run for more than eight continuous hours and if end-users are approaching their allocated limits of storage capacity. These alerts help us manage our cloud computing environment more efficiency and effectively and at the same time keep costs down.”

Self-Healing Networking Automation

Skytap has extended its secure networking intelligence by automatically detecting VPN connections that may periodically disconnect or fail to reconnect properly, and efficiently reconnecting available VPN connections with the Skytap hybrid cloud environment. This self-healing automation ensures that the Skytap Cloud remains available and securely connected to private data centers, while reducing service interruption and the need to manually troubleshoot periodic VPN connectivity issues.

Open Virtualization Formant (OVF) Support

The Skytap Cloud now supports Open Virtualization Format (OVF), an open standard for packaging and distributing virtual machines (VMs) and software. OVF enables the efficient, flexible, and secure distribution of enterprise software by automating the import and installation of existing workloads and virtualized configurations between private, hybrid and public cloud infrastructures. Support of OVF eases VM portability and decreases platform dependence by enabling users to leverage a common set of tools across virtual environments. The addition of OVF complements Skytap’s existing support for the VMDK file format from VMware.

“Customers choose Skytap for our unmatched self-service simplicity, deep levels of visibility and control, and the ability to easily move complex virtualized enterprise environments into a secure cloud environment without changes,” said Brian White, vice president of products at Skytap. “These new product capabilities further extend Skytap’s innovation and leadership along these key dimensions.”

About Skytap, Inc.

Skytap is the leading provider of self-service cloud automation solutions for dynamic workloads. Skytap enables users to run enterprise applications unchanged in the cloud, collaborate securely with global teams, and gain unparalleled business productivity. Additionally, IT organizations can gain visibility and control over cloud projects, align capacity with demand, and reduce costs by 70% or more. Enterprises can securely connect Skytap to their data centers and create virtual private clouds. Skytap is ideal for any dynamic workload including application development, testing, virtual training, application migration and sales demonstration projects. To buy or learn more, visit www.skytap.com.