SEATTLE – April 4, 2017 – Skytap, Inc., the enterprise cloud, today announced a period of accelerating business growth with sales quadrupling from 2013 to 2016, while service usage skyrocketed to nearly 16,500,000 virtual machines (VMs) run on the service in the same period. Enterprise organizations including Airbnb, Fiserv, and NBC Universal are among hundreds of customers worldwide using Skytap’s cloud to modernize core business applications that have traditionally been confined to on-premises datacenters.
To further accelerate growth and expand Skytap’s market position, the company has appointed technology industry veteran Wayne Morris as Chief Marketing Officer. Morris joins Skytap from Microsoft, where he served as corporate vice president leading marketing for the Microsoft Dynamics business, which generated more than $2 billion in revenue in 2016.
“Skytap is positioned to become the primary bridge for enterprises into the cloud. This is a major market opportunity and our sights are set on an IPO,” said Thor Culverhouse, CEO, Skytap. “Building a company of lasting value requires scale, great performance and strong leadership. To continue this trajectory, we are bringing in a marketing leader who will turbocharge our execution. Wayne has experience in the right areas and he’s coming aboard at a tipping point for our business.”
“Traditional applications don’t get as much attention as cloud-native developments. However, the fact is these enterprise applications are vital to businesses and most can’t be easily migrated to the cloud, making modernization difficult,” said Morris. “Skytap is the only cloud that frees enterprise applications from the datacenter, and our growth underscores the strength of this value proposition.”
Strong Business Traction
Delivering on-demand services for customers requires the scale, cost-efficiency, and speed of the cloud. However, the core business applications powering many enterprises were not designed for typical cloud infrastructure, which means they are often stranded in data centers and saddled with technical debt. Skytap solves this challenge with a cloud platform designed specifically for enterprise applications. Customers are adopting Skytap at an exponential rate with sixfold usage growth since 2013. Skytap is also seeing significant momentum in its channel partnership with IBM, further strengthening the company’s ability to reach and modernize the most valuable applications for enterprises worldwide.
Morris Brings Proven History of Marketing Leadership
Morris has more than 20 years of experience as a CEO and CMO for public and privately-held enterprise technology companies, including six years as the CMO of BMC Software. While at BMC, Morris helped drive company revenue to more than $1.5 billion annually as BMC’s employee base tripled.
Morris previously served in CEO roles at myDIALS, a SaaS start-up that achieved global scale, and at Citect, an industrial automation software company listed on the ASX with a global distribution network. Earlier in his career, Morris served in senior leadership positions at McData and HP. He holds a BS in Computer Science from the University of Queensland.
Skytap has also hired Lucas Welch as Senior Director of Communications. Welch joins Skytap from Chef Software, where he led all communications programs for the IT automation pioneer. Prior to Chef, Welch served in a range of PR roles at Isilon Systems, managing communications through Isilon’s 2006 initial public offering and eventual $2 billion acquisition by EMC in 2010.
About Skytap
Skytap is a premier cloud provider designed specifically for enterprise applications. We eliminate the barriers to cloud adoption for these applications that every business depends on, enabling enterprises to modernize these applications at their own pace. Skytap’s cloud delivers faster development, simplified management, and reduced costs. Our patented technology replicates data center environments all the way to the networking layer, enabling hundreds of customers worldwide to easily and securely shift complex systems to the cloud, including Windows, Linux, and AIX-based components. Learn how Skytap can help accelerate your digital transformation at www.skytap.com.
PR Contact:
Lucas Welch
Skytap
lwelch@skytap.com
206-850-5672