Skytap Brings Real-Time Team Collaboration and Role-Based Security Policies to the Cloud

SEATTLE, WA, Nov 09 (MARKET WIRE) --
Skytap, Inc. today announced the release of innovative new capabilities
that enable users to collaborate over the Web using cloud-based virtual
data centers (VDCs). In the same way solutions such as SharePoint and
WebEx enable teams to collaborate on documents, Skytap enables teams to
collaborate on complex IT environments to deliver business initiatives
faster and more predictably. Skytap's latest release includes new
features to create team projects, manage team roles and security
policies, and utilize Skytap Resource Links to quickly and securely share
virtual data centers and machines from any location.

"The idea of utilizing external clouds to enable faster delivery of IT
projects is very compelling for enterprise organizations," said William
Fellows, principal analyst, infrastructure management at 451 Group.
"Skytap has recognized that to enable significant productivity gains in
the enterprise a cloud solution needs to facilitate the business
processes and team workflow involved in delivering complex IT projects."

Unlocking the Potential of the Cloud for IT Teams

Most IT leaders recognize that scalable cloud infrastructure brings
business agility and reduces costs. However, many businesses are
discovering raw "Infrastructure-as-a-Service" is not sufficient to achieve
their goals. Specifically, they need a platform that provides a
self-service portal for functional users, and gives them the ability to
define projects, enable team collaboration, define workflow and set
role-based policies for managing IT resources in the cloud.

"We evaluated a number of cloud providers, including Skytap and Amazon
EC2, to support our IT delivery process," said Brad Potter, senior vice
president, IT operations, at BurrellesLuce. "We chose Skytap because it
offers capabilities that have led to dramatic improvements in our team
productivity, including a rich Web-based interface for team collaboration
and Skytap Resource Links which can be sent via instant message between
team members to enable secure, real-time access to virtual data center
resources in Skytap."

Enabling Distributed Teams While Maintaining Corporate Security

Geographically dispersed teams create a challenge for IT security
administrators. Corporate employees and contractors often have different
access rights to enterprise IT environments, but need to collaborate using
shared resources. In addition to Skytap's existing security capabilities,
including encrypted traffic and secure network virtualization technology,
Skytap's new release includes new features for policy management and
role-based security. These features ensure cloud resources can be secured
and isolated, while enabling different levels of access for corporate
employees and contractors alike.

"We've long recognized that functional users need powerful collaboration
capabilities, and IT operations staff needs policy control over cloud
resources," said Sundar Raghavan, chief product and marketing officer at
Skytap. "With the project management, team collaboration and policy
management features included in our new release, we are delivering
immediate value to both functional users and enterprise IT."

Specific capabilities in Skytap's new release include the following:

-- Skytap Projects: The ability to create projects for teams to share
virtual data centers -- complete environments containing virtual machines,
virtual storage, and virtual networks -- and project assets, much in the
same way that SharePoint is used for sharing documents. The Skytap API
specification has been extended to enable project-related functionality to
be controlled programmatically.
-- Policy management for Users, Resources and Security: Building on
Skytap's User Access Control (UAC) model, project owners can now assign
roles to users with different permissions, such as Managers, Editors and
Members. In addition, administrators can implement role based policies to
manage account access, manage resource quotas and enforce security
requirements.
-- Skytap Resource Links: Skytap now provides innovative Skytap Resource
Links that enable secure access to entire virtual data centers or
individual virtual machines through a single URL. In the same way WebEx can
be used to share a desktop, a Skytap Resource Link provides a way to share
cloud-based virtual data centers in real time using only a Web browser.

When IT organizations combine these new capabilities with Skytap's
existing lab manager Web interface, IPSec VPN tunnel, automated virtual
machine image import/export, and support for native applications, they
can create a powerful and comprehensive 'hybrid' cloud computing
architecture. They can use precious on-premise resources for mission
critical applications, while utilizing Skytap's virtual data centers for
dynamic IT workloads. These workloads include development and test, IT
prototyping, ERP application migration, training and consulting projects.
By utilizing Skytap, customers gain a proven, low-risk path to adopt
cloud computing and can reduce Total Cost of Ownership by 60% or more.

About Skytap, Inc.

Skytap is the leading provider of cloud-based IT labs that deliver 100%
self-service provisioning of complex IT environments. Skytap is based on
industry standard virtualization platforms and supports open migration to
and from the cloud with no application or architectural changes. Skytap's
service significantly reduces IT lab costs with an on-demand,
pay-as-you-go model, and fosters team collaboration through shared,
cloud-based access to virtual machines.

For more information about Skytap's cloud development and test, virtual
training, virtual classroom, and software demo solutions, please visit
http://www.skytap.com.

Contact:
Karli Overmier
Barokas Public Relations
Email Contact
(206) 264-8220

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