Skytap: Enabling legacy workloads in the public cloud

Skytap: Enabling legacy workloads in the public cloud is profiled by BTW Media because published evidence links it to internet infrastructure, governance, operational dependencies, or market visibility.

• Skytap provides purpose-built cloud services for enterprise workloads with strong support for traditional systems on Microsoft Azure and IBM Cloud.
• The company faces industry challenges including cloud migration complexity, multi-cloud integration and competition from major cloud providers while continuing to innovate with hybrid cloud and DevOps support.

Skytap’s cloud services for enterprise workloads

Skytap, a cloud infrastructure provider founded in 2006 and based in Seattle, Washington, specialises in enabling organisations to migrate and run enterprise workloads — including traditional systems such as IBM Power Systems and x86 applications — directly in the public cloud without extensive refactoring. The platform is designed for “cloud migration and modernisation” and offers virtualised environments that allow businesses to lift legacy applications into cloud environments, such as Microsoft Azure and IBM Cloud, with minimal modification.

Skytap’s cloud services also support high-availability production environments, disaster recovery, development and testing workflows, and training labs. According to its website, enterprises across the globe use Skytap for these purposes, which emphasises the company’s breadth of use cases beyond basic compute and storage.

In 2024, Skytap was acquired by Kyndryl, a global IT infrastructure services provider, reinforcing its positioning in cloud services and signalling strategic alignment with a broader managed infrastructure ecosystem.

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Industry trends, challenges and Skytap innovation

The cloud infrastructure industry has grown into a highly competitive space dominated by major hyperscale platforms such as AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud. These providers deliver a broad spectrum of services from IaaS to PaaS and SaaS, enabling rapid scalability, global reach and automation. Skytap differentiates itself by focusing on workloads that are traditionally challenging to migrate — such as IBM i and AIX systems — allowing enterprises to avoid the time, risk and expense associated with rewriting applications.

One of the key challenges for enterprises today is the complexity of cloud migration, especially for legacy workloads with deep integrations to on-premises infrastructure. Skytap’s approach — integrating with Azure and IBM Cloud — helps organisations realise cloud benefits such as capacity on demand, advanced analytics and DevOps acceleration without major code changes.

Innovation in the sector includes hybrid cloud environments, automated provisioning, and self-service capabilities that allow for rapid development and testing cycles. Skytap supports these trends with features that enable self-provisioning of virtual environments and integration with cloud-native tools to improve agility and reduce time to market.