Trek Bicycle Corporation Turns to Skytap to Meet Agile Development
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CASE STUDY » CHALLENGES Trek Bicycle Corporation Turns to Skytap to Meet Agile Development Needs • Required faster response to provisioning requests • Needed greater flexibility than previous infrastructure allowed » Trek Bicycle Corporation is one of the biggest bicycle manufacturers in the world with its products marketed • Sought a cloud-based solution to minimize CapEx through 1,700 dealers across North America, subsidiaries in and OpEx Europe and Asia, and distributors in 90 countries around the globe. As a socially responsible company, Trek continuously » SOLUTION evaluates its manufacturing processes and business practices to ensure its actions, and those of its employees, reflect and Trek Bicycle Corporation adopted Skytap to simplify promote better-world goals. and expedite provisioning of IT environments for its development and test teams. Trek has chosen to move its application development and test environments to Skytap. » BENEFITS Situation • Reduced provisioning time from weeks and days Trek Bicycle is a global leader in the design and manufacture of bicycles and to minutes related products. When Trek began in 1976, its mission was simple: Build the • Gained flexibility to create platforms for testing best bikes in the world. Today, the company has expanded its mission: Help diverse needs of global customers the world use the bicycle as a simple solution to complex problems. • Ease of use made Skytap resources feel like an extension of Trek’s IT Trek is committed to breaking down the barriers that prevent people from • Increased cost efficiency using bicycles more often for transportation, recreation, and inspiration. “The bicycle is something that can combat climate change, ease urban congestion, and build human fitness,” notes Trek. “It brings us together, yet allows us to escape. And it takes us places we would never see any » CUSTOMER HIGHLIGHTS other way.” Trek’s spirit of innovation led it to enter the Point of Sale (POS) software “The decision to go with Skytap was a no-brainer. business to better assist the vendors reselling Trek bicycles in a globally Skytap provided us with the best path. It was the diverse market. Trek created a POS software line called Ascend that least expensive option and provided the best overall integrates with desktop applications. Ascend has a client-server architecture solution for meeting our needs, while fitting with and is currently used by 800 dealers in North America, Germany, and the UK. our long term strategy.” As the software product team worked to enhance Ascend, it felt constrained “From provisioning of machines and servers to by its aging hardware and software infrastructure that made it difficult to their customer support Skytap is like an extension create the environments they needed to support Agile development and of our in-house IT. Skytap is fantastic to work robust testing. with!” Steve Novoselac, Business Intelligence and .NET Challenges Development Manager, Trek Bicycle Corporation Because the development and test teams for Ascend were creating a desktop application for deployment around the world, they had a critical need for a flexible IT infrastructure that would enable them to swiftly configure and deploy a wide variety of operating environments, including www.skytap.com 1-888-759-8278 international versions of multiple operating systems. This was difficult to accomplish under Trek’s current setup. The teams felt encumbered by an aging development and test IT infrastructure that was based on an old VMware environment consisting of four servers, a SAN storage system, and limited on-premises licensing for VMware. Continued on back » CASE STUDY “Managing the internal virtual lab was a logistical nightmare,” says and that we would be able to do this incredibly fast,” Novoselac Steve Novoselac, Business Intelligence and .NET Development says. “Skytap has become an incredible asset for Trek’s application Manager at Trek Bicycle Corporation. “There was little of use in development and testing.” the way of administrative tools for reporting with our in-house VMware farm. Self-service for developers and the QA team was Skytap resources are so easy to use that Trek development and test all but impossible. And we were faced with critical challenges like teams have come to feel as if Skytap is just part of their company. doing multi-store configurations for testing against a German or UK “From provisioning of machines and servers to their customer environment. We needed a better solution, something that would support Skytap is like an extension of our in-house IT,” Novoselac support the Agile development we required.” says. “Skytap is fantastic to work with!” Solution Trek evaluated several options, including upgrading to enterprise versions of VMware or going to Amazon Web Services, but ultimately chose Skytap. “The decision to go with Skytap was a no-brainer,” » CUSTOMER HIGHLIGHTS Novoselac says. “Skytap provided us with the best path. It was the least expensive option and provided the best overall solution for “Getting new environments provisioned quickly meeting our needs, while fitting with our long-term strategy.” had previously been a major blocker for us. Since moving to Skytap, our development and test teams The Trek development and QA teams have gained the ability to can spin up environments in minutes vs. days create multiple development configurations instantly, run them in or weeks.” parallel, and customize them to meet their global needs. This self- service solution has given Trek the flexible, scalable, and on-demand Steve Novoselac, Business Intelligence and .NET IT environment it requires to enable its development and QA teams Development Manager, Trek Bicycle Corporation to embrace Agile development. A cloud-based solution has freed Trek from the significant capital expenditures required to provision a similar lab on its own, and from GETTING STARTED the operational expense of running an in-house lab. To learn how Skytap can deliver value Benefits to your organization, contact a cloud Skytap has given Trek’s development and QA teams the on- computing expert at [email protected] demand, self-service infrastructure they need to support their Agile software development. Since all of Trek’s dev/test environments or call us at 1-888-759-8278 are now hosted in Skytap, their full range of configurations and IT environments can be instantly shared between teams, enabling www.skytap.com collaboration and reducing turn-around times. Provisioning a new environment with the old internal system could take “at least three weeks, and sometimes the configurations we needed simply couldn’t be provided,” Novoselac notes. “Getting new environments provisioned quickly had previously been a major blocker for us,” Novoselac says. “Since moving to Skytap, our development and test teams can spin up environments in minutes vs. days or weeks.” Trek also appreciates the inherent flexibility of a cloud-based solution. “When we looked at Skytap, we realized it would enable us to build all of the environments we needed from the ground up .