A New CEO’s Perspective on the Skytap Community

My name is Thor Culverhouse and on July 1 was appointed CEO of Skytap. While this is my first contribution to the Skytap Blog, I’m a regular reader and I’m anxious to learn more about the Skytap community. Skytap already has over 250 enterprise and mid-market customers, and the Skytap Blog is a helpful forum

Enterprise Application Evolution: Hybrid Apps and the Cloud

Join our chief technology officer, Brad Schick, for this upcoming webinar produced in conjunction with InformationWeek. Mr. Schick will discuss why the evolution of enterprise applications will be hybrid applications that will opportunistically take advantage of cloud-based services.​ More about the event Complex multi-tier enterprise applications that have been under development for decades assume reliable

Ask a Skytap Engineer: Ian Bone

For this edition of the ‘Ask a Skytap Engineer’ series, I spoke with Ian Bone, an engineer on Skytap’s networking team. Ian’s been all over the stack at a variety of large and small employers, and he really dislikes doing work that computers can do for him. In his spare time, Ian bikes, dances, does

Using the Skytap Virtual Machine Metadata Service

On August 6, 2013, Skytap announced the availability of a Skytap metadata service that allows access to Skytap-specific virtual machine (VM) metadata from within a running VM. This allows you to leverage information about a running VM from a command line, application or script running within the VM itself. Additionally, this metadata service also introduces

Still Looking for a Lab Manager Replacement?

Are you part of an organization that is currently running vCenter Lab Manager? You’re not alone. When VMware announced its decision to discontinue additional major releases of the product, it was a bit of a wake-up call for users. As the conversation has progressed, it’s clear that many users aren’t necessarily convinced that vCloud Director

Agile 2013: Creating Software Better and Faster

The Skytap team recently returned from Agile 2013 in Nashville, Tennessee. The conference offered anyone involved with software development a unique opportunity to explore the depth of Agile techniques. Skytap was proud to be a part of all the methodologies and tools that were on display during the week. And over at the Skytap booth,

Busted! 5 Cloud Computing Myths

The cloud hype cycle continues to swirl, and now that larger enterprises are wading in, the messages coming through can be pretty confusing. I work with a lot of companies moving development and test environments to the cloud in my job at Skytap, so I thought it might be fun to share a list of

A Look at the Expert Predictions for VMworld 2013

It’s never too early to start planning for VMworld. The Skytap team is always excited to attend an event where so many great companies are emerging with great products. The energy, enthusiasm, and spirit of innovation and learning over the 5-day event is off the charts. It’s definitely our kind of scene. As we’re all

Skytap Leadership at Upcoming Industry Events

In the coming months, Skytap leadership will be attending a number of industry events, including Agile 2013, VMworld, Camp IT, and STARWEST. The Skytap team will be providing live demonstrations of Skytap Cloud, including how our software is used by enterprise customers for development and testing, software demonstrations and evaluations, and virtual training environments. Agile

While the Principles of Agile are Simple, Making it Reality is Hard

To create great software, companies are using Agile development. But while the principles of Agile development are simple, transforming it into reality can be hard due to obstacles like costs, large teams, one-size-fits-all architecture, resource constraints, old technology—and the list goes on. To achieve Agile development, teams require elastic, dynamic, scalable, automated, self-service infrastructures. Many

White Paper: Accelerate Software Development with DevOps and Hybrid Cloud

Our new whitepaper discusses the state of DevOps and hybrid cloud computing, as well as the business and technical advantages of combining DevOps with hybrid cloud architecture. The right cloud provider will enable enterprises to move workloads to a secure hybrid cloud, thereby creating a seamless and secure extension to existing internal IT infrastructure, resources,

Accelerate DevOps with Hybrid Cloud

​In my previous blog, Combining DevOps with Agile Development, I discussed the state of DevOps and the need to incorporate Agile Development—concluding that while DevOps and Agile development were a great fit, a hybrid cloud was the third piece of the puzzle to help the enterprise accelerate the pace of software development, deployment, and innovation.