Skytap

Articleissues
advert = August 2008
COI = y
primarysources = August 2008
self-published = August 2008

Skytap, Inc., founded in 2006, is a cloud computing provider that provides Virtual lab automation as a cloud service. It is headquartered in Seattle, Washington. Skytap is funded by Ignition Partners, Madrona Ventures, and Bezos Expeditions (investments of Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com fame).

Skytap is a cloud computing platform that enables existing and new applications, virtual machines and systems to run unchanged in the cloud on industry-standard platforms. Skytap cloud infrastructure supports the leading hypervisors, including VMware and Xen, and operating systems, such as Microsoft Windows and Linux. Skytap provides management and automation capabilities so companies can integrate cloud infrastructure into their existing IT environments.

Virtual Lab Automation as a Cloud Service

Skytap launched a Virtual lab automation solution as a cloud service [cite web | url = http://weblog.infoworld.com/virtualization/archives/2008/04/skytap_reveals.html
title = Skytap reveals cloud-based services as it enters virtual lab market ] in April 2008. Skytap Virtual Lab provides virtual infrastructure on demand, a Web-based virtual lab management application and a pre-populated virtual machine library for creating new virtual machine configurations. Skytap offers the ability to access virtual machines from any location using a Web browser, including mobile devices such as the iPhone. [cite web | url = http://www.fastcompany.tv/video/skytap-iphone-demo-a-virtual-lab-enterprise-apps
title = Scoble demonstrates Skytap on an iPhone ]

Skytap introduces the concept of templates to represent one or more pre-built VM images. These templates can be very simple and contain one VM, or they can be very complex and house several. The latter case is particularly useful when you are working with applications that multiple machines (i.e. database + app server + web server). Skytap users can use the pre-built templates as well as create their own. One of the interesting ways Skytap can be used by development teams is to create templates that reproduce bugs or build breaks. Because a template can be very complex (i.e. they can house many VM's), even the most complicated deployment environment can be easily replicated.

In order to use a Skytap template, you install it into your virtual lab. This notion enables a development team to instantiate multiple instances of a single template - enabling different teams to work in parallel.

Competitors

There are several competitors to Skytap in the virtual lab automation market, most of whom focus exclusively on on-premise solutions instead of cloud-based solutions which is Skytap's focus. Here is a list of the leading competitors:

* Surgient
* Toolwire
* VMWare Lab Manager
* VMLogix

References

* cite web
url=http://blogs.forrester.com/it_infrastructure/2008/06/throw-out-your.html
title=Throw out your test lab: Virtualized workloads can be trialed in the cloud
publisher=Forrester Research
last=
first=

External links

* [http://www.skytap.com Skytap]
* [http://www.surgient.com Surgient]
* [http://www.toolwire.com Toolwire]
* [http://www.vmlogix.com VMLogix]
* [http://www.vmware.com/products/labmanager/ VMWare Lab Manager]