SEATTLE, WA – September 10, 2008 – Skytap, Inc., the leading provider of cloud-based infrastructure solutions, today announced a new training solution for its flagship Virtual Lab platform. Skytap’s training solution enables organizations to quickly and efficiently migrate on-site training infrastructure to the cloud, achieving up to 90 percent faster setup of complex classroom environments and easier online administration.
“Skytap Virtual Lab gave me everything I needed to quickly and intuitively setup my environment based on a long menu of choices for different hardware, operating systems, software applications and version numbers,” said Shannon Martin, training manager of VDIworks. “At the push of a button, I can instantly replicate my configuration in the lab onto a student’s desktop – whether they are sitting with me in the classroom, or half-way around the world.”
Many organizations, including enterprises, technology companies and higher education institutions, find it increasingly difficult and costly to build and support onsite physical training labs. The number of students often varies from class to class which creates difficulty in scaling up classroom equipment to meet demand. Additionally, many organizations want to offer distance learning on-demand to accommodate student schedules, but struggle to provide Web-based access to classroom environments.
Skytap’s 100 percent on-demand training environment can meet the demands of fluctuating class sizes while lowering costs by up to 90 percent, minimize upfront hardware and software purchases and reduce administrative overhead. Cloud-based labs provide better long-distance training while enabling instructors and students to collaborate through the use of shared virtual environments. As a result, organizations can deliver more affordable training options to a broader base of students.
Take Training Out of the Classroom and into the Cloud
Skytap’s Virtual Lab is the first cloud-based solution for training initiatives available as an on-demand service over the Web. Using Skytap Virtual Lab, instructors and training lab administrators can significantly improve the set-up and tear-down of complex, multi-tiered classroom environments. The service is accessible from any location using just a browser, and enables customers to easily upload standard training software, create classrooms, manage student access, and efficiently roll out new training courses. Because Virtual Lab is offered as a service, it enables users to immediately utilize lab resources from a pool of hosted virtualized infrastructure to support classroom, online and on-demand training courses.
“Training environments are a perfect fit for a cloud computing model as they are often underutilized and difficult to maintain, but need to be rapidly scaled up and down based on demand,” said Scott Roza, CEO of Skytap. “Using a cloud computing service like Skytap, companies offering training courses can eliminate costly hardware and software expenditures, while ensuring superior performance of their training applications. Skytap customers have set up training labs over 90 percent faster and at the same time offered a better service to their clients.”
Skytap provides a virtualized infrastructure, including hardware, storage and networking resources that can be accessed on demand. When combined with Skytap’s virtual lab management application and the Skytap Library, a pre-populated software library which includes virtual images of major operating systems, databases and application software in multiple languages, customers are provided with a complete cloud computing service for their training environments.
For more information, please visit www.skytap.com.
