Skytap Puts Cloud Orchestration, Policy Management, and Hybrid Cloud Features Into Action at VMworld 2011

Skytap, Inc., the leading provider of self-service cloud automation solutions, today announced that it will showcase several new cloud automation capabilities at booth 1149 during the upcoming VMworld conference held from August 29 – September 1 at the Wynn and Venetian hotels in Las Vegas, NV.

Since the last VMworld conference, Skytap has introduced several new innovations in cloud automation that deliver cost savings of 70 percent or more and reduce the time it takes to move enterprise workloads to the cloud. These innovations include:

  • Self-Service Hybrid Cloud – Skytap’s new solution capabilities enable IT managers to create hybrid clouds by configuring network connectivity and security policies quickly using a web UI. Functional users are then empowered to connect their cloud instances with corporate data centers with point and click ease. Skytap’s hybrid cloud solution enables enterprises to create cloud instances that act as a seamless extension of their data centers. With this innovation, Skytap offers comprehensive enterprise hybrid capabilities including automated import/export of existing images, full support of existing applications, a two-way IPSEC tunnel, and advanced multi-tier topologies that emulate in-house virtual data centers. More than 25 percent of Skytap customer cloud environments are now hybrid in nature.
  • Cloud Orchestration and Configuration Routing – Skytap released new cloud orchestration and network connectivity capabilities that enable development and test users to consolidate and centralize their build/test servers in the cloud, avoid set-up errors and reduce costs. Using the new network routing feature, software teams are able to create a hub-and-spoke model with centralized servers acting as a hub, individual dev/test configurations acting as nodes, and network routes acting as spokes. Dev/test teams are able to utilize the self-service cloud orchestration features to automate the sequencing and scheduling of a complex multi-server environment. This eliminates the need for complicated scripts and costly software licenses.
  • Security Policy Management for Cloud Access and Control – Skytap introduced new security policy management features that provide one central cloud facility for enterprises to keep up with ever-changing security and policy requirements, and protect sensitive applications in the cloud. New enterprise-ready features such as IP access range limits, browser validation, and email verification strengthened Skytap’s comprehensive security policy management capabilities.
  • Organizational Policy Management – Businesses can now use Skytap’s cloud platform to manage the needs of multiple large user groups, with varying roles, such as development, test, training, sales engineering and IT operations. Departmental or divisional cloud administrators can assign role-based permissions and user level quotas to govern cloud usage within and across various teams. Skytap provides a flexible model to organize users into “groups” based on a user’s specific role in a project, geographic location or business unit.

Along with the above capabilities, Skytap has announced the addition of several enterprises to its customer portfolio including Wolters KluwerHargis Engineers, and Trek Bicycles. Most recently, Boeing spoke about its cloud deployment success using Skytap at the Enterprise Cloud Summit at Interop 2011. These customers have successfully integrated their Skytap cloud environments to in-house systems using Skytap’s comprehensive hybrid cloud capabilities. This deep integration has increased the agility of users and significantly reduced the cost and complexity of managing IT environments.

By talking to successful IT architects working in these companies, Skytap has compiled a best practices guide for cloud deployments. To learn more, read the 7 Habits of Highly Effective Cloud Architects whitepaper.

“Over the last twelve months, Skytap has led the innovation agenda in enabling enterprises to accelerate their adoption of secure, self-service hybrid clouds,” said Sundar Raghavan, vice president of marketing for Skytap. “The market opportunity for proven cloud solutions continues to grow as enterprises look to the cloud as the preferred model to focus and deliver on their application development priorities. At VMworld, enterprises can see the full power of Skytap’s cloud automation solution which has closed the gap between on-premise and cloud environments.”

About Skytap
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 developmenttestingvirtual trainingapplication migration and sales demonstration projects. To buy or learn more, visit www.skytap.com.