Cloudcast – Cloud Computing and Virtual Lab Management

Skytap vs. Infrastructure-as-a-Service

November 9th, 2009 Posted in Skytap, Virtual Lab Automation and Management | No Comments »

We often get the question about how Skytap stacks up against ‘Infrastructure-as-a-Service’ vendors. We’ve put together a quick summary of Skytap vs. Amazon EC2 vs. Azure vs. Rackspace so you can see how different we are, esp. for dynamic IT environments and labs. Although Azure technically isn’t a ‘IaaS’ vendor, many folks are starting to consider [...]

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Skytap’s ISV Customers Reach 100,000 Software Demo Milestone

October 26th, 2009 Posted in Virtual Lab Automation and Management | No Comments »

Today we announced that numerous software vendors, including Acresso, HP, OpenText, and SchemaLogic, have collectively delivered over 100,000 software demos and proof of concepts (POCs) to their customers using Skytap’s cloud platform. Similar to hosting an online meeting, Skytap allows customers to view a demo or complete a POC engagement whether they are in the same [...]

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Our View on the Open Cloud Manifesto

March 30th, 2009 Posted in Cloud Computing | No Comments »

The Open Cloud Manifesto was released today to a flurry of comment and criticism from the media, including GigaOm, eWeek, ZDnet, and others. This comes after last week’s post from Microsoft, complaining about the closed nature of the manifesto’s development. Although few can argue with any of the broad principles in the document (including us), [...]

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Skytap Receives $7 Million Series B Round of Funding

March 16th, 2009 Posted in News, Skytap | No Comments »

Skytap, Inc., the leading provider of cloud-based virtual lab solutions, today announced it completed a $7 million Series B round of funding from Ignition Partners, Madrona Venture Group and Washington Research Foundation. The funds will be used to bolster the company’s product development, sales and marketing efforts.
See the full press release here.

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CloudCamp Brings Together Seattle’s Cloud Innovators

March 3rd, 2009 Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

We attended CloudCamp Seattle on Saturday and participated in the first CloudCamp unconference to visit the emerald city.
Seattle is home to an impressive list of cloud computing companies (Amazon, Microsoft, and Google’s seattle campus), as well as a growing list of emerging startups (Decho, Skytap, and a plethora of SaaS companies). This makes Seattle a [...]

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Recasting Virtualization Initiatives as Cloud Initiatives

February 18th, 2009 Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

According to Forrester and Gartner, consolidating servers through virtualization can result in up to 50% savings on hardware costs¹ and a 15-20% reduction in total cost of ownership² once a project is complete and project costs have been included. I’d wager most IT managers would agree that virtualization has been a cost saving strategy for [...]

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Better Software with Crowdsourcing and Cloud Computing

February 10th, 2009 Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Crowdsourcing and cloud computing are two exciting trends in the tech industry. We’ve teamed up with our friends at uTest to show how you can combine online communities and cloud-based infrastructure to build better software.  Join our 30 minute live Webcast tomorrow to learn:
• How crowdsourcing and cloud computing can be used together to improve the [...]

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Gartner Says Cloud Application Infrastructure Technologies Need Seven Years to Mature

February 4th, 2009 Posted in Cloud Computing | No Comments »

Gartner issued a press release predicting the 3 phases of evolution for cloud computing. In the first phase, pioneers and trailblazers, Gartner predicts successful vendors will focus on rapid-application-development-oriented tools and solutions where return on investment can be acquired within 18 to 24 months.
We agree that successful cloud providers will need to prove their value [...]

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Cloud Ontology

January 28th, 2009 Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

John Willis’ blog post and Reuven Cohen comments bring up the ongoing debate on cloud ontology. I posted some thoughts on who will win in the different cloud segments around the launch of Microsoft Azure and the new breed of cloud solutions that combine different elements of the stack to solve specific business problems. Skytap [...]

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Skytap Virtual Lab – January Release

January 19th, 2009 Posted in Releases, Skytap | No Comments »

The January 2009 release of Skytap Virtual includes lots of new capabilities and feature requests from our user community.  As always, thanks for your continued input and feedback on the product!
Here is what’s new for January:
- Per-User Usage Quotas
- Usage Metering & Reporting Enhancements
- Auto-Suspend Configurations at Specific Times
- Specify Access Time Windows for Published [...]

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