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Skytap Cloud Integrates With Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2012; Introduces New Automation Pack
REDMOND, WA, Jan 29, 2013 (MARKETWIRE via COMTEX) --
ALM 3 SUMMIT -- Skytap Inc., the leading provider of self-service
cloud automation solutions, today unveiled a new Automation Pack that
seamlessly enables on-premise Microsoft Team Foundation Server (TFS),
Visual Studio and Testing Manager workflows to dynamically create
testing environments in Skytap Cloud. The Automation Pack offers
flexible support for a wide range of application development
workloads, ranging from .NET client applications to complex n-tier
server applications, such as SharePoint. With these capabilities,
customers using TFS and Visual Studio 2012 can accelerate
build-deploy-test (BDT) workflows, increase business agility, and
lower costs using Skytap Cloud.
Agile development and testing methodologies enable businesses to
accelerate the delivery of new software products to market. While
some cloud services have attempted to provide a foundation for these
agile environments, they often require sacrifices from the
development and test teams. Many cloud providers operate at the basic
infrastructure-as-a-service level, which typically require an
up-front time and resource investment to create the target cloud
environments in advance. The Skytap Automation Pack brings together
the best of both worlds, providing the automated scale and elasticity
of cloud infrastructure coupled with the preferred tools and
processes that development and test teams are currently using today.
"Agile development for the cloud demands rapid deployment, a high
focus on user experience and access to highly elastic resources for
software testing, while requiring comparatively less underlying
infrastructure for developing applications," said Asheesh Raina,
principal research analyst at Gartner, in a report titled "Market
Trends: Application Development Software, Worldwide, 2012-2016." "The
trend is compelling enough to force traditional agile development
vendors to 'cloud enable' their existing offerings and position them
as a service to be delivered through the cloud."
The Skytap Automation Pack is software that installs on Visual Studio
Team Foundation Server 2012, providing workflow automation and
seamless integration with Skytap Cloud. With this solution, customers
can:
-- Run TFS on-premise and automatically spin-up, run, and tear down
complex Microsoft development and testing environments in Skytap Cloud
on-demand
-- Dynamically provision secure VPN network connectivity between test
environments in Skytap Cloud and TFS without manual intervention
-- Create golden templates of complete test environments in Skytap Cloud
using Microsoft Test Manager -- automating the creation of identical
clean environments for each test pass
-- Automatically snapshot entire test environments in Skytap Cloud to
investigate and diagnose root cause of test pass failures
-- Review consolidated test pass reports using Microsoft Test Manager
-- Support complex testing requirements of n-tier applications with
virtual test environments that are identical to production
environments on-premise or in Microsoft Azure
"Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2012 is an Enterprise ALM
solution that enables teams to deliver software at a continuous
cadence with agility and quality. The lab management capability of
the solution delivers self-service experiences for developers and
testers that reduce the cycle times in provisioning and managing
development and test environments with operational compliance," said
Karthik Ravindran, senior director of ALM product management at
Microsoft. "With the Skytap Automation Pack, teams can extend their
Team Foundation Server ALM lab infrastructure beyond their on-premise
investments, to include the option of the Skytap cloud
infrastructure. This option will enable teams to burst to the Skytap
cloud from within their ALM workflows for dev and test lab management
and gain the economics of scale benefits of cloud computing for dev
and test workloads."
By deploying TFS and Visual Studio workloads in Skytap Cloud,
businesses can eliminate the time and effort required to provision,
configure, and manage complex on-premise test environments. Customers
benefit from Skytap's Intelligent Automation Platform, which offers
self-service automation, team collaboration, and visibility and
control capabilities not available with traditional cloud
environments. For example, distributed teams of developers and
testers can create and collaborate on highly parallelized testing
environments. With on-demand access to Skytap Cloud, customers can
scale up and quickly deploy additional environments as needed to
accelerate software development and testing cycles. Users can also
leverage other existing development and test tools in a hybrid cloud
environment by creating secure VPN connections from on-premise
environments to Skytap Cloud.
"In order to be a truly Agile development process, the entire
application lifecycle must be fast, including the provisioning of
test environments and the speed at which you can deploy your
application into these environments," said Sumit Mehrotra, director
of product management at Skytap. "By combining their on-premise TFS
or Visual Studio environments with Skytap Cloud, Agile teams can
deliver products faster, increasing the speed at which the
organization can generate revenue."
Skytap's director of product management, Sumit Mehrotra, will be
speaking at the Microsoft ALM 3 Summit as part of a panel on Agile
testing, helping software development teams adopt the best practices
that fit their organizations. As part of the presentation, Sumit will
provide a live demonstration of the new Skytap Automation Pack for
Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server. The presentation will
take place on Thurs., Jan. 31 at 12:45 p.m. PT in the Cascade room of
Microsoft Conference Center, Building 33 on Microsoft's Redmond
campus.
About Skytap, Inc.
Skytap is the leading provider of self-service
cloud automation solutions for dynamic workloads. Skytap Cloud gives
businesses a fast, easy, and secure way to create complex computing
environments in the cloud. Customers can run enterprise applications
unchanged in the cloud, collaborate securely with global teams, and
gain unparalleled business productivity. Additionally, IT
organizations maintain full visibility and control over cloud
projects, align capacity with demand, and reduce costs. Enterprises
can securely connect Skytap Cloud to their data centers and create
hybrid clouds. Skytap is ideal for any dynamic workload including
development and testing, software demos and evaluations, and virtual
training. To try Skytap Cloud and learn more, visit www.skytap.com.
Contact:
Lindsey Bradshaw
Barokas Public Relations
Email Contact
206-264-8220
SOURCE: Skytap
http://www2.marketwire.com/mw/emailprcntct id=7531BF98705630C0
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