ORLANDO, Fla.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Hosting and Cloud service enablement leader Parallels today announced it is positioning itself for the growth in small and medium business cloud consumption with the introduction of new strategic Cloud Infrastructure and Hosted PBX solutions, as well as support for Microsoft Office 365 Syndication and Hyper-V Cloud. It is also increasing its investment in facilitating APS-enabled solutions to accelerate ISV’s ability to also profit from the cloud.
According to ‘Parallels SMB Cloud Insights’ (U.S. 2010), small and medium business (SMB) cloud consumption has hit the mass adoption curve with the cloud services market valued at $10.6 billion in 2010. This market opportunity will increase to $28.6 billion and small businesses with fewer than 100 employees are the foundation of this market. They account for over 80% of the total market spending and over 95% of all U.S. SMBs.
“SMBs cloud consumption has hit the wide adoption curve and driving a sea change in the cloud industry,” said Birger Steen, CEO of Parallels. “They are demanding a trusted, full-service provider to deliver the integrated and complete portfolio of IT services they need. Today, there aren’t many that can provide the full-service offering or keep up with the increasing expectations from their customers. Partnering is the only way service providers will meet the growing needs of SMB and stay competitive.”
Service providers need to adjust to remain competitive in the industry as SMBs are asking their traditional IT providers for cloud services, driving new, well-funded entrants into the market. The service provider must offer a full set of integrated services to grow profit and reduce churn. With the right partners, they can do that and can continue to drive efficiency accelerating growth through reinvestment.
To help service providers, Parallels is announcing a series of new products and programs resulting from the insights gained from the SMB research project. This will enable Service Providers to profit from the cloud by focusing on the greatest opportunities.
Parallels is launching and supporting:
- Parallels Automation for Cloud Infrastructure
- Hosted PBX
- Microsoft System Center Hyper-V Cloud
- Microsoft Office 365 Syndication
- Increased Investment in the APS Program
These announcements are on top of already established market leading products like Parallels Virtuozzo Containers, recently recognized as the world’s leading virtualization technology by Tier 1 Research with 37% market share, 10% ahead of the competition; and Linux Shared Hosting Next Generation that provides 5x-10x density of sites per server and 99.999% reliability with low operating costs.
Parallels Automation for Cloud Infrastructure
“Today we are launching Parallels Automation for Cloud Infrastructure to help service providers extend their offerings to SMBs and become more profitable,” said Steen. “Parallels’ cloud infrastructure solution enables service providers to rapidly and profitably deliver the infrastructure cloud computing and storage services to SMBs and developers. It enables service providers to become more competitive against bigger providers like Amazon.”
This is the industry’s only infrastructure cloud solution that supports all key service delivery components like provisioning, billing, and self-service management. Unlike competitor products, Parallels Automation for Cloud Infrastructure can be managed through an integrated management panel, enabling IT professionals to self-create, self-scale, and self-manage virtual datacenters.
"Parallels Automation for Cloud Infrastructure is the solution to the growing competitive pressure in the traditional hosting market, allowing us to provide real cloud services that easily compete with the big guns," said Jason Frisch, CEO of Tsukaeru, who implemented Parallels Automation for Cloud Infrastructure in his Datacenter.
Scality CEO Jérôme Lecat said, “With Parallels Automation for Cloud Infrastructure, we discovered a solution that provides utmost level of manageability for service providers who want to offer a complete suite of Cloud Services, ranging from computing and virtualization to storage. As a trusted partner with extended experience of service providers, Parallels was able to leverage our technology to deliver the perfect product for their customers.”
Hosted PBX
“Parallels’ research estimates that the SMB hosted PBX market will grow to $3.9 billion in the U.S.,” said Steen. “With provisioning and billing automation in Parallels Automation, hosted PBX service will become easier for service providers to resell a full, unified communications suite to SMBs.”
Service providers will be able to quickly and easily add hosted PBX and other VoIP services by reselling hosted services such as BroadSoft BroadWorks, allowing them to capitalize on the rapidly growing hosted PBX market.
“We are leveraging a third-party hosted BroadWorks PBX service for our popular WorkLife cloud-hosted productivity tool, which is delivered by Parallels Automation,” said James Griffin, Director of Hosting Strategy at Star Communications. “This enables us to provide our customers with a complete set of services at an attractive price. Parallels Automation allowed us to get to market in a fraction of the time compared to developing the integrations ourselves.”
Microsoft System Center Hyper-V Cloud
Service providers can rapidly deploy Microsoft’s System Center Hyper-V Cloud virtualization with Parallels Automation. This enables them to manage Hyper-V virtual machines, offer self-service control panels, and implement a multi-tier reseller channel using Microsoft System Center and Parallels Automation.
“In response to increasing demand for Microsoft Hyper-V Cloud servers, Cobweb is leveraging its Parallels Automation delivery system to quickly bring this new SMB service to market,” said Julian Dyer, CTO, Cobweb Solutions. “The common unified billing, control panel and end user experience supports our strategy of delivering a consistent user experience across a widening portfolio of Cloud Services. We are delivering a complete service offering in a fast changing world, utilizing our skills and knowledge to provide a suite of Cloud Services, backed by ISO accredited security processes.”
Parallels has expanded the suite of Microsoft products available to service providers with the addition of Hyper-V support. Other solutions available include Microsoft Exchange, SharePoint, Office Communications Server, Dynamics CRM, and Microsoft Online Services syndication.
Microsoft Office 365 Syndication
Parallels Automation automates provisioning, billing and service plan creation to provide the fastest way for Cloud Service Providers to deliver Microsoft Online Services Syndication now and Microsoft Office 365 Syndication when it becomes available, as well as other complementary services that can be easily bundled to meet to the varied IT needs of SMBs and help increase the average spend per user.
“Cloud infrastructure services are powered by a number of different technologies and hosting customers buy various types of hosted applications built by different technology vendors. The challenge for hosters is to support and automate the delivery of as many of these technologies as possible,” said Philbert Shih, Senior Analyst for Hosting at Tier1 Research. “This is crucial because accommodating different technologies helps hosters maximize their market opportunity while delivering choice and flexibility to customers.”
Increased Investment in the APS Program
“There have been over 1.6 Million downloads of APS-enabled applications from APSStandard.org and more than half a million live instances within Parallels Plesk Panel and Parallels Automation,” said Steen. “Parallels continues to invest heavily in APS with new tools and improved processes to make it easier for any SaaS ISV to enable, promote, sell and profit from using the application packaging standard.”
To accelerate the delivery of new APS-enabled solutions, Parallels has developed a program to provide a network of system integrators that can help service providers to APS package their offerings. System integrators include: ActiveCloud, Komtet, Softec and iSynergy.
New additions to the APS catalogue include:
- Kaltura – used to rapidly launch new cloud-based media services and deliver a new generation of cloud-based applications that integrate video, rich media and UGC/social networking that extend cloud-based experiences to virtually any device, across managed or unmanaged networks.
- Infratel – offers a world-class suite of contact center and interaction solutions designed primarily for small and medium-sized businesses. Infratel has over 700 companies and 10,000 end-users worldwide.
- Attracta – provides a suite of automated SEO tools and services that help websites increase traffic from Google and other top search engines.
- Sonian – launched an integration module for Parallels Business Automation Standard, ensuring that the delivery of Email Archiving services through Parallels’ platforms is easy and highly profitable for service providers.
- MXSweep – global provider of SaaS Internet Security and Compliance services including email security & encryption, email content control & compliance, email recovery & continuity, email archiving, mobile and web security, used today by over 3000 companies in 16 countries.
- Smarsh – provides hosted solutions for archiving electronic communications including email, instant messaging, mobile messaging and social media platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.
- MessageSolution, Inc. – the global technology leader in enterprise archiving and eDiscovery, offers the first in the market managed service provider’s (MSP) datacenter multi-tenant solutions, helping SME clients for compliance, litigation support, storage management, and email cross-platform migrations.
“Sonian is proud to be successfully integrated with Parallels Automation,” said Greg Arnette, CTO of Sonian. “Sonian’s email archiving technology and Parallels Automation allows service providers to quickly bring to market an email archival solution to meet the needs of regulatory compliance, audit, eDiscovery and Storage management.”
“We continue to be the most innovative cloud enabler in the world,” said Steen. “These announcements, along with our strategic partnerships with other cloud leaders, position us for considerable growth as the leader in SMB cloud enablement.”
About Parallels
Parallels is a worldwide leader in hosting and cloud service enablement and desktop virtualization. Founded in 1999, Parallels is a fast-growing company with more than 800 employees in North America, Europe, and Asia. You can follow updates from the conference at @ParallelsSummit and on the Parallels Service Provider blog and join the conversation on Twitter using #ParallelsSummit. For more general information, please visit www.parallels.com, follow us on Twitter at www.twitter.com/ParallelsPanel and www.twitter.com/ParallelsCloud.