Skytap, Inc., the leading provider of cloud-based virtual labs, today announced that it was named to the first annual listing of the InformationWeek Startup 50, revealed in the April 20^th edition of InformationWeek Magazine and on InformationWeek.com. Skytap was one of only a handful of cloud computing vendors named to this prestigious list. The company was honored based on the innovation of its Virtual Lab platform and the solution’s ability to dramatically lower costs and provide on-demand computing for today’s enterprises. 

“We’re honored that InformationWeek has recognized Skytap twice in less than a year, after having been recognized as a ‘must-know’ cloud computing startup last Fall,” said Scott Roza, CEO of Skytap. “Our Virtual Lab platform continues to prove its value to enterprise customers by driving down IT lab costs by 50 percent or more and increasing the flexibility and scalability of their IT operations.” 

Skytap’s unique value is that it helps companies realize the benefit of “cloudonomics” by migrating costly and underutilized environments, such as those used for application development and testing, IT operations, sales demos and training, to the cloud. Skytap’s Virtual Lab platform allows companies to take their existing applications, virtual machines and systems and run them unchanged on industry-standard platforms on a ‘pay-as-you-go’ basis. This approach provides a low-risk adoption path to cloud computing, and delivers the highest level of ROI as these dynamic environments fluctuate dramatically and are costly to manage. 

InformationWeek’s Startup 50 is a list of the top 50 business technology startups selected by InformationWeek readers and editors. Companies were selected in a three-step process that involved nomination, online voting, and editorial vetting. The technologies and the companies behind them were evaluated on the following criteria:  

·         Innovation and their ability to inject new ways of doing things into business processes

·         Value, which is reflected in lower costs, increased sales, higher productivity, or improved customer loyalty

·         Enterprise-readiness, meaning that a product or service scales and can be deployed and managed as necessary by IT pros

“It was difficult to limit ourselves to 50 startups because there’s a lot of exciting companies out there,” said Andrew Conry-Murray, Business Editor, InformationWeek.  “That said, we believe the InformationWeek Startup 50 have innovative solutions to critical business problems and are worthy of enterprise consideration.”

InformationWeek editors and readers identified young companies that are ready to address the critical challenges facing the enterprise.  Whether it is securing networks, cutting costs or streamlining IT operations and business processes, the InformationWeek Startup 50 provides IT professionals and executives insight on new and innovative solutions from the named companies.

The full list of the InformationWeek Startup 50: Business Technology Companies To Watch, along with analysis by InformationWeek editors, can be found online at http://www.informationweek.com/news/services/saas/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=216600068.