[February 05, 2013]

Parallels Announces Game Changing Innovations to Help Small and Medium Businesses Seamlessly Use Bundled Cloud Services

Parallels, the hosting and cloud services enablement leader, today announced that small and medium business (SMB) adoption of cloud services from its partners using Parallels Automation and the Application Packaging Standard (APS) grew by more than 80 percent in 2012. This growth was fueled by SMBs who are now using an average of four cloud applications each, along with more than 50 percent of the top 30 global telecommunications providers now using the Parallels cloud service delivery platform. This is in addition to the 9,000 service providers and more than 50,000 web designers and developers also using the company's software to serve millions of SMBs.

To continue enabling service providers to grow and increase their share of the SMB cloud market, which is expected to mushroom to $95B by 2015¹, Parallels is unveiling number of new products including a major update to the Application Packaging Standard. APS 2.0 now includes a pluggable single sign-on, service bus architecture, and customizable user interface enabling service providers to seamlessly offer differentiated bundles of cloud services with an easy purchase and activation experience. APS 2.0 will be integrated in Parallels Automation 5.5, which is expected to ship later this year, and will include more than 30 back-office improvements and new services such as support for Microsoft Lync 2013 Hosting Pack.

To help service providers manage their SMB customers' accelerating storage needs, Parallels announced Parallels Cloud Server and Parallels Cloud Storage. Parallels Cloud Storage turns existing unused disk space in servers into scalable, high-availability and high-performance distributed storage. It is now available as part of Parallels Cloud Server, which brings�Parallels Virtuozzo Containers�together with the company's world-class hypervisor technology into a single product.

In addition to these product announcements, Parallels also released usage data for its products. First, Parallels Plesk Panel 11 is the fastest adopted version in the company's history. Second, more than 100 Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) have joined the APS ecosystem with new services in 2012. Finally, the Parallels service provider ecosystem has grown by more than 450 new partners over the past year. These updates combined with the new product announcements continue to make Parallels the catalyst for service providers to accelerate cloud adoption by SMBs.

"Parallels mission is to help service providers profit from the cloud. 2012 has been a breakthrough year for us in this regard," said Birger Steen, CEO of Parallels. "We have assisted service providers on all continents in crafting and executing cloud strategies, and we have enabled hundreds of new, useful cloud services for SMBs. We have continued extending our cloud service delivery platform: Parallels Cloud Storage dramatically reduces the cost of providing highly available storage. Parallels Automation 5.5 with APS 2.0 lets service providers deliver a seamless experience for SMBs buying multiple cloud services, with a library of more than 400 apps to choose from. We are more optimistic about our partners' success, as well as our own, than ever before."

"In working with hosters and service providers since the industry emerged in the late '90s, we have seen the acceleration of demand to create, deliver and manage bundled services for SMBs," said Serguei Beloussov, Chairman and Chief Architect of Parallels. "APS 2.0 is the game-changing technology that will make this happen across all Parallels products."

"SMBs are adopting cloud services at an accelerating rate, and they also have more choice than ever before in where to buy their cloud services," said Philbert Shih, Managing Director of Structure Research. "If service providers expect to stay relevant, they need to have access to actionable market research and analysis, the right enabling technologies, and a powerful partner ecosystem so they stay ahead of the competition. Parallels brings all of these requirements together in an integrated fashion specifically designed to help service providers succeed."

These announcements are being made in Las Vegas this week at Parallels Summit 2013. The event addresses all aspects of the company's service provider enablement solutions and business: Parallels service delivery software, expansion of the widest cloud services catalog, the broadest partner ecosystem, proprietary industry research and analysis, and a suite of go-to-market consulting and implementation services.

"During our evaluation process, it quickly became clear that Parallels was the only vendor that could offer us a proven off-the-shelf product and deploy it within a few months. In addition to the Parallels Automation platform, Parallels was able to provide us with the business consulting services we needed to configure it optimally for our offering and advise us on how to take it to market effectively in multiple countries. The fact that Parallels also has a very strong ecosystem of third-party partners, with applications that we can quickly and easily add to the platform over time, was also a key factor in our decision," said Rolf Magne Aasen, CTO at Telenor Business Internet Services." Throughout the entire process, Parallels has gone the extra mile to fulfill our requirements, and the team's 'can do attitude' enables rapid time to market across multiple geographies. We simply could not have met our demanding launch schedule without them, as well as develop such a complete offering for our next wave."

Next Generation of Cloud Service Delivery Software from Parallels

Parallels also announced new automation, virtualization and cloud storage products in addition to comprehensive enhancements to Parallels control panel products at Parallels Summit.

With Parallels software, service providers can manage infrastructure, automate provisioning and accurately bill for the widest range of cloud services for SMBs, while offering best-in-class control panels for self-service for the not only the provider but also for their resellers, IT administrators and end users. With a complete stack of cloud enablement software, Parallels can help service providers of any size offer SMBs the cloud services they need, ranging from shared hosting to hosted communications and collaboration to infrastructure-as-a-service to software-as-a-service. Products highlighted at the Summit included:

• Announcing APS 2.0: Parallels has significantly enhanced APS 2.0 to provide a secure, integrated and differentiated experience across all cloud services with service bus architecture, multi-factor authentication single sign-on, RESTful APIs, and HTML 5-based dynamic user interface.

"APS 2.0 takes the ability to integrate cloud services and create a seamless, unified experience for SMBs to the next level. It goes beyond software installation and defines a bus allowing independent cloud applications to interact," said Ruslan Fazlyev, CEO of Ecwid. "We are pleased to be in the early adopter program for APS 2.0." /p>

• Announcing Parallels Automation 5.5: Parallels Automation 5.5 is expected to ship later this year and will have APS 2.0 built in and fully integrated. Navigation across billing and provisioning has been streamlined for an easy purchase and activation experience. The set of RESTful APIs has been expanded. New and updated core services include Linux and Windows Hosting, Microsoft (News - Alert) Exchange 2013, Microsoft Lync 2013 and Cloud Infrastructure. This makes Parallels Automation the platform of choice for service providers and developers to innovate and differentiate.

"Parallels Automation combined with the APS standard, managed by KPN (News - Alert) Software Online, form the underlying core technologies of KPN's Cloud Store," said KPN Omar Benameur." By eliminating the complexity of order delivery and payment processing, various KPN Business Units including KPN Wholesale, E-Plus and Base are able to aggressively recruit both service providers and ISVs to build out their own customized and diverse cloud marketplaces."

• Announcing Parallels Cloud Storage: Parallels Cloud Storage drastically reduces the cost of high-availability storage. Offered as a seamless upgrade for existing Parallels Virtuozzo Containers and Parallels Server customers, it will support third party virtualization technologies in 2013. Parallels Cloud Storage uses the existing unused disk space on server nodes to create a self-healing centralized storage pool for distributed, high-performance cloud storage.

"Parallels Cloud Server changes the game for VPS and cloud hosting," said David Collins, CTO of HostGator.�"The way Parallels Cloud Storage utilizes unused disk space on the servers is the missing piece of the puzzle."

• Announcing Parallels Cloud Server: Parallels Cloud Server now makes it easy to offer all cloud infrastructure services customers want. It includes�Parallels Virtuozzo Containers�together with our world-class hypervisor technology and Parallels Cloud Storage, combing all of the pieces to enable best-in-class infrastructure services.

"We've been a global partner since 2005, offering a variety of virtualization solutions from Parallels in order to provide our customers with greater scalability," said Nathan Day, Chief Scientist for SoftLayer Technologies. "By extending our portfolio to include Parallels Cloud Server, we're enabling our customers to obtain high availability servers while reducing maintenance costs."

• Announcing Parallels Plesk Automation: Parallels Plesk Automation is a scalable, multi-server cloud automation solution enabling a seamless growth path for Parallels Plesk Panel customers to scale to thousands of servers and a wide range of services. It also provides the ability to centrally manage end customers.

"Never before has there been a company with a product line that can meet every cloud and hosting need from the small single domain on a virtual private server, to a provider that needs centralized management for many diverse servers, to the full customized automation platforms for the largest enterprise customer," said Stephen Evans, Director of Operations, APYL Inc. "With Parallels Plesk Automation, Parallels gives us the ability to grow and excel like never before."

• Parallels Presence Builder: With Parallels Presence Builder, service providers can attract new customers and differentiate their offerings. Parallels Presence Builder has hundreds of industry-specific site designs for SMB businesses along with an intuitive drag-and-drop interface. In addition to integration with Parallels Plesk Panel, Parallels Plesk Automation and Parallels Automation, it now supports cPanel and provides full set of APIs to integrate with any in-house system.

"Parallels Presence Builder gives small business owners with no technology background at all the ability to quickly and easily create professional-looking websites," said Kathy Nelson, Chief Decision Maker at Ovaleye. One of Ovaleye's customers is a small business called Bellefleur, and the founder and owner, Jennifer Carroll, added, "With Parallels Presence Builder, you can build something yourself that looks good, feels good and gives your customers a good idea of who you are. You can customize it, brand it and get your point across without a big price tag (News - Alert)."

• Parallels Plesk Panel: Parallels Plesk Panel 11 continues its march to being the fastest control panel adopted ever.

"Our partnership with Parallels, in particular with respect to the deployment of Parallels Plesk Panel and Parallels Virtuozzo Containers, provides us with an efficient and cost-effective way to introduce new upstream services and grow our revenue opportunities," said Narayanan Ganeshan, Senior Manager, Cloud Operations, CtrlS. "It also allows us to offer our customers a value-added product that helps them to boost their profitability and operational efficiency."

New APS Certification Program for ISVs Supports Vast Expansion of Parallels Ecosystem

Over the past year, Parallels has expanded its ecosystem to include more than 450 new partnerships across the technology industry, including service providers such as Colt, Sprint and Telenor, leading resellers, and more than a hundred ISVs. The company's partner ecosystem is designed to allow service providers to offer and integrate the broadest and most flexible set of third party cloud services available in the market. New applications to the APS cloud catalog include: 5nine Cloud Backup, Monitoring and Firewall for Hyper-V, CakeMail, CertiVox SkyPin and PrivateSky, Cisco Webex, Gamasec, Identity Syncronizer, Luxcloud Hosted 365, Mailprotector Email Security & Management Suite, Mail2World, Microsoft Dynamics by Luxcloud, Minoto Video, Opero, Premier Global Services (PGi), Sonian. Enhanced applications in the APS cloud catalog include CloudFlare, Dell Quest, EMC Mozy, and Microsoft Lync 2010 SP2.

To provide users with the best possible user experience across this growing and diverse array of APS applications supporting Parallels products, the company is announcing a new Parallels APS certification program for ISVs. This program will also provide enhanced market opportunities for those ISVs who demonstrate via certification that their products have the highest possible quality of support for Parallels products. The certification program is a component of the newly launched Parallels Cloud Services Developer partner program. Details of the new programs will be available on the Parallels PartnerNet portal, which features news, forums, go-to-market tools and assets, training, and developer product licenses.

"With more than 80,000 business customers now relying on Mozy for cloud backup, we have become more focused than ever on selling Mozy through the channel - and our recently revamped Mozy Reseller Program and channel-friendly pricing and terms are a testament to this," said Simon Kingston, Director, Global Partners at Mozy. "Working with Parallels APS technology allows us to tap into the large and growing Parallels installed base of service providers. It's very easy for service providers to include Mozy in their offering."

"The combination of Parallels Automation and APS makes of the Hosted365 bundle the ultimate reseller opportunity," said Marco Houwen, CEO at LuxCloud. "No fewer than seven APS packages are used inside the Hosted365 bundle to give customers access to a complete set of applications, e-mail, website and Sharepoint."

"McAfee and its partners are working diligently to help SMBs be secure with simple-to-adopt cloud security solutions," said Craig Parrish, Vice President of SMB sales, McAfee.�"Parallels Application Packaging Standard is compatible with McAfee cloud-based solutions including McAfee SaaS (News - Alert) Email Protection, Email Archiving, Email Encryption, Web Protection and Endpoint, to simplify and automate cloud services enabling providers to leverage the cloud for profitability and security."

"Microsoft Lync APS integration with Parallels Automation is helping service providers accelerate time to revenue with faster deployments and scalable multi-tenant offer delivery," said Laura Howard,�Sr. Director Lync Service Provider Engineering Team, Microsoft. "Service providers can now deliver rich Lync functionality, typically available to larger enterprises, to their SMB customers as a hosted service"

See www.APSstandard.org for a complete list of certified applications.

Click to download additional comments from Parallels partners about the products and services discussed at Parallels Summit.

Research and Consulting Practice Highlights

Parallels primary and proprietary research estimates that the global SMB market grew 30 percent in 2012 to $45 billion, with strong growth across all categories of cloud services. The market is expected to expand at a 28 percent CAGR to $95 billion by the end of 2015. Parallels released these statistics along with additional in-depth SMB market analysis in the latest Parallels SMB Cloud Insights™ reports. The research series has now entered its third year of covering the SMB cloud market. The new 2013 reports include updated SMB cloud purchasing profiles for the United States, Brazil, Mexico and the world. In addition, this year Parallels has provided its readers with even more advanced analytics tools including a Kano analysis and transformed this research into e-learning modules that will be made available at Parallels Cloud University throughout 2013.

In cases where service providers would like Parallels to take its research and insights deeper into their organizations, Parallels Cloud Accelerations Services provides a suite of professional services designed to define, build, launch and grow a service provider's cloud business. The suite is honed from hundreds of deployments of Parallels cloud enablement solutions. Parallels Cloud Acceleration Services delivers cloud product management and go-to-market consulting, giving service providers' critical business thinking and analysis to help create a differentiated portfolio and customer experience.

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 900 employees in North America, Europe, and Asia.

For more information, please visit www.parallels.com/spp, follow us on Twitter at www.twitter.com/ParallelsCloud, and Like Us on Facebook (News - Alert) at www.facebook.com/ParallelsCloud.

¹ According to Parallels SMB Cloud Insights™ Global Report (Feb 2013)

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