Seattle, WA – October 22, 2009 – Skytap, Inc., the leading provider of cloud-based IT labs, today announced the company’s CEO, Scott Roza, was named as a 2009 Top 25 Innovator & Entrepreneur by Seattle Business magazine. The awards program recognizes Seattle’s most creative and innovative business entrepreneurs who are making names for themselves in areas ranging from technology to consumer goods. The magazine honored its 2009 Innovators last night during an awards ceremony at the Space Needle in Seattle.
“Seattle is a city rich in innovation and entrepreneurial spirit, and I feel fortunate to be on the list next to a handful of CEOs making a material impact in our community,” said Scott Roza, CEO, Skytap. “Skytap has evolved into one of the most successful privately held cloud computing companies in the market, and we credit our strong team and our proximity to technology leaders like Amazon and Microsoft as they have helped build an extremely talented Pacific Northwest workforce.”
Prior to joining Skytap, Roza was vice president of worldwide OEM and channel sales for HP/Opsware’s Business Service Automation business unit (HP acquired Opsware for $1.6 billion in 2007). Prior to that, he ran marketing and business development for iConclude, where the business relationship he forged with Opsware led to their acquisition of iConclude for $65 million in early 2007. Prior to iConclude, Roza oversaw sales and marketing for Advanced Digital Information Corporation (ADIC), a $475 million public data storage company, where he more than doubled ADIC’s branded business. He has served in the United States Navy as a Submarine Officer, and holds an M.B.A. from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Skytap, based in Seattle’s Pioneer Square, offers cloud-based virtual lab solutions that reduce the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of IT labs by 50% or more. Skytap’s solutions are ideal for high cost, dynamic environments, such as application development and QA, IT ops testing, virtual learning and sales demo environments, which are typically underutilized and difficult for IT operations to maintain. The company’s innovative Virtual Lab product offers a powerful, self-service lab manager application to set-up, access and manage virtual environments over the Web. Customers can develop and run applications and virtual machines unchanged in the cloud, and can realize immediate benefits by adopting a ‘hybrid’ model of cloud computing to utilize cloud and on-site resources together. This model leverages the cost and virtualization benefits of ‘cloud’ while maintaining existing on-site environments, tools and processes.
More than 125 companies were nominated this year for the Top 25 Innovators & Entrepreneurs Awards. The winners were chosen by an advisory board comprised of Michael Butler (CEO, Cascadia Capital), Greg Gottesman (Managing Director, Madrona Venture Group), Len Jessup (Director, Center for Entrepreneurial Studies, Washington State University), Connie Bourassa-Shaw (Director, Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship), Ed Lazowska (Bill and Melinda Gates Chair, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Washington), Gary Tomlinson (Executive Director, Seed Intellectual Property Law Group), Ken Myer (CEO, Washington Technology Industry Association), Rebecca Lovell (Executive Director, Northwest Entrepreneur Network) and Kim Zentz (Executive Director, SIRTI).
