Parallels innovations to ease SMB cloud transition

• New automation, virtualization and cloud storage products and enhancements to Parallels control panel products announced
• Parallels ecosystem now includes more than 450 new partnerships across the technology industry

VIRTUALIZATION specialist Parallels has announced a slew of new products aimed at making the delivery of cloud services to small and medium businesses (SMBs) a more seamless experience.
 
The announcements were made at the hosting and cloud services enablement company’s annual summit taking place in Las Vegas, Nevada from Feb 4 to 7, with over 1000 partners, analysts and clients in attendance.
 
According to Parallels, SMB adoption of cloud services from its partners using Parallels Automation and the Application Packaging Standard (APS) grew by more than 80% in 2012.
 
This growth was fueled by SMBs which are now using an average of four cloud applications each, along with more than 50% of the top 30 global telecommunications providers using the Parallels cloud service delivery platform.
 
“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 (pic), Parallels chief executive officer.
 
“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,” he added.
 
The SMB cloud market is expected to mushroom to US$95 billion by 2015 and in line with this growth, Parallels has released a range of new products:

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 (application programming interfaces), and HTML 5-based dynamic user interface.
 
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 Exchange 2013, Microsoft Lync 2013 and Cloud Infrastructure.
 
Parallels Cloud Storage
 
Parallels Cloud Storage is touted to drastically reduce 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.
 
It 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
 
Parallels Cloud Server now makes it easy to offer all cloud infrastructure services customers want, the company claimed. It includes Parallels Virtuozzo Containers together with our world-class hypervisor technology and Parallels Cloud Storage, combining all of the pieces to enable best-in-class infrastructure services.
 
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.
 
Parallels Presence Builder
 
Parallels Presence Builder boasts 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.
 
Certification program for ISVs
 
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 (independent software vendors).
 
To provide users with the best possible user experience, the company has announced a new Parallels APS certification program for ISVs.
 
This program will also provide enhanced market opportunities for those ISVs which 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.
 
Gabey Goh reports from the Parallels Summit 2013 taking place in Las Vegas, Nevada from Feb 4 to 7, at the company’s invitation.
 
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