Skytap: Modernizing Traditional Enterprise Applications in the Cloud
Skytap, Inc. is a specialized cloud computing company headquartered in Seattle, Washington, that provides a public cloud service primarily focused on accelerating the digital transformation and application modernization of enterprises. The core function of Skytap is to enable organizations to migrate and run their traditional, business-critical applications in the public cloud without the need for extensive rewriting or refactoring. This is achieved by offering Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) designed to natively support complex, multi-tier enterprise environments. The company was founded in 2006 as Illumita and later acquired by Kyndryl in 2024.
The fundamental value proposition of Skytap is its unique ability to replicate entire on-premises data center environments in a hyperscale cloud, including all the underlying infrastructure, storage, operating system, middleware, andâ??criticallyâ??Layer 2 and Layer 3 network connections. This technical capability allows applications built on proprietary or legacy architectures to function natively in a cloud environment.
Core Product and Specialized Support
The company's flagship product is Skytap Cloud. It is purpose-built to solve a significant challenge in cloud migration: the difficulty of moving applications built on non-x86 architectures. Skytap is distinguished as one of the only cloud services to support running IBM Power Systems workloadsâ??specifically those utilizing AIX, IBM i, and Linux on Powerâ??alongside traditional x86 workloads. This unique cross-platform capability ensures that enterprises with vast investments in IBM Power architecture can seamlessly transition their core business applications to a multi-cloud or hybrid-cloud strategy, utilizing platforms like Microsoft Azure or IBM Cloud.
Products and Services: Key Use Cases
Skytap Cloud's design for running full, complex application environments makes it a versatile platform for several critical enterprise use cases:
Application Migration and Modernization: Skytap facilitates a lift-and-shift migration strategy for traditional applications, avoiding the time, cost, and risk associated with application re-architecture. Once applications are running in Skytap, businesses can then incrementally modernize them by integrating new cloud-native services and microservices.
Development and Testing (DevOps): The platform is heavily leveraged for creating high-fidelity, production-like environments for development, testing, and quality assurance. Developers can clone complex, multi-machine environments in minutes via self-service provisioning, ensuring that testing and development accurately reflect production conditions. This capability accelerates the software development lifecycle and supports agile and DevOps practices.
Virtual Training and Sales Demos: Skytap is used to quickly spin up and tear down replica environments for virtual training labs, sales demonstrations, and proofs of concept (POCs). This eliminates the need for physical hardware and provides an on-demand, consistent experience for trainees or prospective clients globally.
Production and Disaster Recovery (DR): The service is also used to host production environments, providing the scalability, high availability, and business continuity benefits of the public cloud. Its self-service capabilities and environment cloning are integral to setting up and managing robust disaster recovery solutions for critical workloads.
Platform Features and Capabilities
Skytap Cloud includes a comprehensive suite of features that simplify the management of complex cloud environments:
Self-Service and Automated Provisioning: Users can provision and manage complete environments through a web-based interface, REST API, or command-line interface (CLI).
Environment Cloning and Templates: A key feature is the ability to clone entire configurationsâ??including all virtual machines, network topology, and memory stateâ??in minutes. Organizations can also create and manage libraries of custom, pre-configured templates for standardization.
DevOps Integration: The platform supports integration with popular application lifecycle management and DevOps tools, such as Jenkins, Visual Studio TFS, Terraform, Docker, and Ansible.
Network Isolation and Management: Skytap provides sophisticated networking capabilities, including the ability to replicate Layer 2 networking, which is essential for many traditional applications that rely on specific network configurations. It also offers network monitoring and load balancing.
Resource and Cost Management: Administrators can control costs through features like resource scheduling (to automatically suspend or resume environments) and setting usage limits for compute, storage, and concurrency.
Security and Compliance: The platform includes features such as data security, compliance management, and user access controls/permissions to help enterprises meet their regulatory and security requirements.
In summary, Skytap operates as a specialized, enterprise-focused IaaS provider that acts as a bridge for complex, often legacy, systems to the public cloud, ensuring that the substantial investment in traditional applications and architectures, including IBM Power, can be preserved and modernized.
Please note: This information is generated by AI. For legal use, verify with company sources.
