Skytap today announced a partnership with Microsoft Azure as the company continues its shift to becoming a capability within public cloud providers.
Founded 12 years ago, Skytap helps companies migrate legacy systems to the cloud. Thanks to the new deal with Microsoft, its customers will be able to move various legacy apps — including those running on IBM i, AIX, and Linux on Power — to Azure with minimal change. The idea is to let companies take advantage of Azure services to augment traditional apps, without having to completely rewrite them.
“We recognize that enterprises have many critical systems that were not designed with the cloud in mind,” Microsoft Corporate Vice President for Azure Dedicated Eric Lockard said in a statement. “Skytap’s ability to migrate and run these applications natively in Microsoft Azure with minimal changes accelerates cloud adoption. Once running in Microsoft Azure businesses can enhance traditional systems with cloud native services, opening new options for innovation and delivery of customer value.”
The deal is part of Skytap’s new strategy of working with other cloud companies rather than hosting customers on its own cloud. It is looking to compliment the large cloud computing providers and provide expertise for migrating legacy systems that were originally built to run on-premise with traditional infrastructure.
“Our intention is to provide our services everywhere a customer wants to run their workloads,” said Skytap CEO Bradley Schick.
That shift comes amid leadership and personnel changes at Skytap. Last month, Schick replaced former CEO Thor Culverhouse, who led Skytap for six years. Schick was previously CTO and joined the company nine years ago.
Two weeks later, Skytap laid off around 12 percent of its workforce in an effort to “optimize” its operations.
The company employs about 175 people and has raised $109.5 million in funding. Backers include Goldman Sachs, Insight Venture Partners, Madrona Venture Group, Ignition Partners, OpenView Capital, W Capital Partners, WRF Capital, and others. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos also invested in the company in its early days.
