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Skytap Announces Integrated Cloud Platform for Professional Developers

Developer Tool Integration at PDC Highlights Collaboration and Efficiency for Developers and Testers

LOS ANGELES, CA – October 27, 2008 – Skytap, Inc., the leading provider of cloud-based virtual lab solutions, today announced it will demonstrate integration with Microsoft Visual Studio Team System at the 2008 Professional Developers Conference (PDC) held in Los Angeles from October 27-30. Effective immediately, Microsoft developers can log into Skytap's Virtual Lab Platform to access Windows desktop and server virtual machines on demand, and easily set up and tear down virtual labs for software development and testing using Visual Studio. Skytap provides Microsoft developers the flexibility to run applications unchanged on any version of Windows without rewriting developer code, a typical limitation with most cloud infrastructure environments.

"Skytap's integration with Visual Studio Team System gives Microsoft developers another on-ramp to the cloud for the full spectrum of Windows development," said Norman Guadagno, Director of Product Management for Visual Studio Team System. "Skytap Virtual Lab provides an easy, affordable way to access virtual infrastructure for development and testing in the cloud."

Microsoft developers receive a host of benefits with the Skytap Virtual Lab Platform, including:

  • Affordable pay-as-you-go subscription model better aligns costs with fluctuating development cycles.
  • Real-time collaboration between developers and testers. For example, a tester in India and a developer in the U.S. can simultaneously share the same virtual environment to expedite trouble-shooting and streamline the application development lifecycle.
  • Efficient reproduction of defects using Skytap snapshots of multi-machine stacks at the point of failure. Visual Studio Team System integration allows environments to be launched directly from work items.
  • Advanced REST-based Web Service interface enables cloud resources to be controlled programmatically.
  • One-click VPN creates "hybrid" development environment whereby cloud resources can be used as an extension of existing onsite resources.

"Cloud computing is going to revolutionize how development and testing is conducted, and we are committed to being the first cloud vendor out of the gate to support Microsoft's strong and growing developer network," said Scott Roza, chief executive office of Skytap. "Skytap's integration with Visual Studio is just the beginning of our support for Microsoft developers. We have seen increasing demand from our customers for Hyper-V and fully anticipate supporting the release of Visual Studio 2010 in the months ahead."

"We see enormous value for our customers to be able to setup virtual lab environments for development and testing, and then tie them back to Team Foundation Server," said Chris Menegay, president of Notion Solutions, a Microsoft Gold Certified partner. "We've been recommending that customers setup virtual test environments and automate deployment to those environments, but it's been expensive and difficult to get started. Skytap provides a simple and cost effective way for companies to implement an on-demand virtualized environment and adopt recognized development and testing best practices."

For more information on Skytap Virtual Lab, please visit www.skytap.com.

About Skytap, Inc.

Skytap is the leading provider of cloud-based virtual lab solutions that enable rapid development, testing, and deployment of applications in a 100% on-demand 'virtual data center'. Skytap provides self-service provisioning of virtual environments, a powerful web-based lab management application and support for existing applications to run unchanged in the cloud.

The Seattle-based company has an experienced executive team and advisory board, including industry veterans from HP, Microsoft, IBM Rational, Mercury and EMC. Skytap was founded in 2006 and has venture backing from Madrona Venture Group, Ignition Partners, Bezos Expeditions, and WRF Capital. For more information about Skytap, please visit www.skytap.com.

Contact:
Frances Bigley
Barokas Public Relations
206-264-8220