Skytap Inc., the leading provider of self-service application development environments in the cloud, today announced a new Continuous Integration (CI) Plugin for Jenkins, which adds functionality into the Jenkins web user interface to create and manipulate templates and configurations in Skytap Cloud.

As an open source, cross-platform system for continuous integration, Jenkins is widely utilized for rapid development and test of software applications. The solution provides a robust framework for development, as well as support for plugins or extensions that allow Jenkins users to leverage a large set of tools as part of its user-defined software build and test workflow. Skytap’s Continuous Integration Plugin for Jenkins allows Jenkins users to leverage Skytap Cloud as part of these defined build and test workflows.

“For years, acquiring, installing, configuring, and supporting on-premises software tools and development and test environments were a drag on available resources,” said Kurt Bittner, principal analyst at Forrester Research. “Cloud-based options change all that by enabling teams to start working immediately without substantial lead-times for tool and environment setup.”

By deploying Jenkins continuous integration environments within Skytap Cloud, development and testing teams can greatly reduce the resources needed to manage, provision and configure complex dev/test environments. Skytap Cloud allows development and testing teams to instantly scale environments as needed during high-impact testing cycles, and leverage additional development and testing resources and tools from Skytap’s template library.

“There is no one-size-fits-all software development and test tool chain that is ubiquitous across all teams in all enterprises“, said Brian White, vice president of products at Skytap. “The combination of Skytap Cloud’s development and testing feature-set, with the flexibility and extensibility of Jenkins, gives developers and testers a powerful tool to help accelerate agile software development with the result of building better software faster.”

Customers can download the Skytap Cloud CI Plugin for Jenkins from the Jenkins Plugin website, and install the plugin directly from the Jenkins Web user interface. Once installed, the plugin acts as an extension of their defined build and test workflow, allowing developers and testers to apply Skytap actions for use in Jenkins project builds.