Skytap, a global, purpose-built cloud service, has announced that its support for the IBM i operating system is now available in US-West, US-Central, and EMEA-UK, broadening its support for IBM Power Systems-based applications that can be developed, tested and run in production.
According to Skytap, the IBM i market is highly stable and, with cloud migrations, data center consolidation, and digital transformation increasing, organizations can now run IBM i in Skytap and augment their applications with new cloud services. Skytap runs in IBM Cloud, can be programmatically integrated with IBM's cloud-native services, and is complemented by IBM's Power Systems Virtual Servers on IBM Cloud.
As clients enter the next chapter of their cloud journeys, they want the flexibility and choice to run their workloads across any environment, including on-premise, and in public and private clouds, said Harish Grama, general manager, IBM Cloud. The collaboration with Skytap enables IBM to combine the power of IBM Cloud with Skytap's portfolio, and this new support helps to provide additional choice and flexibility. The availability of Skytap Cloud's support for IBM i complements the new IBM Power Systems Virtual Servers on IBM Cloud which are designed to help enterprises accelerate hybrid cloud adoption, Grama added.
Skytap has partnered with HelpSystems to bring Robot HA to the public cloud, accelerating the movement of IBM i data to the cloud, keeping it synchronized, and ensuring high availability and disaster recovery capabilities for IBM i applications running in Skytap.
To assist with moving very large datasets, Skytap now supports IBM's Mass Data Migration Service. This globally available service helps enable customers to receive NAS devices more quickly, load their data and ship the drive for data to be uploaded into Skytap.
Skytap includes support for the commonly used administrator tools, IBM i Access - Client Solutions and IBM Navigator for IBM i. Customers can utilize IBM Backup, Recovery & Media Services (BRMS) for IBM i combined with IBM Cloud Storage Solutions for IBM i to plan, manage backups and store libraries and objects in the cloud, reducing the need for tape drives, cartridges or courier services.
Skytap and ARCAD Software have also partnered to bring DevOps and application modernization capabilities to the cloud. ARCAD DevOps products automate builds, continuously regression test and manage the automation to deploy heterogeneous applications faster and more securely across multiple platforms. ARCAD's Application Modernization products enable customers to transform their source code and database, modernize their green screens and create web services for IBM i applications in Skytap.
"With our seamless DevOps support for heterogeneous x86 and Power applications, including Windows, Linux, Unix, IBM i, and z/OS, we are a perfect complement to Skytap. Customers can modernize how they ship software to derive ongoing value from IBM i. ARCAD's unique features enable the highly efficient CI/CT/CD cycles that are vital in cloud environments," said Michel Mouchon, CTO, ARCAD Software.
Skytap also recently expanded its cloud footprint to include a second location for Asia-Pacific located in Singapore and a new Equinix hub in US-Central with plans to expand its Equinix availability into Asia-Pacific in the second half of 2019.
For more information, go to www.skytap.com.