Cloud Collaboration on Ulitzer

Skytap today will start dangling the chance to collaborate over the web using cloud-based virtual data centers (VDCs), something Amazon, say, can’t do, certainly not with the flick of a single URL.

Like SharePoint and WebEx enable teams to collaborate on documents, Skytap, which caters to test and development, is supposed to let teams collaborate in complex IT environments.

Skytap’s latest release includes features to create team projects, manage team roles and security policies, and use so-called Skytap Resource Links to share virtual data centers and machines from any location.

Skytap says raw infrastructure-as-a-service just won’t cut it; people need a platform that lets them define projects, enable team collaboration, define workflow and set role-based policies for managing IT resources in the cloud but security’s a problem. Corporate employees and contractors often have different access rights to enterprise IT environments, but still have to collaborate using shared resources.

Besides Skytap’s existing security capabilities, including encrypted traffic and secure network virtualization technology, the company’s new release includes features for policy management and role-based security that ensure cloud resources can be secured and isolated, while enabling different levels of access for, say, corporate employees and contractors.

It says its users can create projects for teams to share virtual data centers – complete environments with virtual machines, virtual storage and virtual networks – plus project assets, much the way Microsoft’s SharePoint is used for sharing documents except Skytap’s widgetry’s in the cloud.

Skytap’s API has been extended to let project-related functionality be controlled programmatically.

It can also do policy management for users, resources and security.

Building on Skytap’s User Access Control (UAC) model, project owners can assign roles to users with different permissions, such as managers, editors and members. Administrators can also implement role-based policies to manage account access and resource quotas and enforce security requirements.

Skytap’s Resource Links enables secure access to entire virtual data centers or individual VMs through the magic of a single URL.

In the way that WebEx can be used to share a desktop, a Resource Link provides a way to share cloud-based virtual data centers in real-time using only a browser.

When IT organizations combine these new capabilities with Skytap’s existing IPSec VPN tunnel, automated virtual machine image import/export, and support for native applications, Skytap says they can create a “hybrid” cloud and marshal on-premise resources for mission-critical applications, while using Skytap’s virtual data centers for dynamic IT workloads.

These workloads include test and dev, IT prototyping, ERP application migration, training and consulting projects.

Skytap figures customers can reduce TCO 60% or more.