SMB Adoption of Parallels-Powered Cloud Services Grew 80% in 2012

Parallels
IP Holdings GmbH, announced that SMB adoption of cloud services
from its partners using Parallels Automation and the Application
Packaging Standard grew by more than 80% in 2012.

This growth was fueled by SMBs who are
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. 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 2015, the company is unveiling new
products, including an update to the Application Packaging Standard.
It includes a pluggable single sign-on, service bus architecture, and
customizable UI enabling service providers to offer differentiated
bundles of cloud services with easy purchase and activation
experience. It 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 services such as support for Microsoft
Lync 2013 Hosting Pack.

To help service providers manage their
SMB customers’ 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 distributed
storage. It is now available as part of Parallels Cloud Server, which
brings Parallels
Virtuozzo Containers together with the company’s hypervisor
technology into a single product.

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 ISVs have
joined the APS ecosystem with 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 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, MD 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 were made in Las
Vegas during Parallels Summit 2013. The event addressed all aspects
of the company’s service provider enablement solutions and business:
Parallels service delivery software, expansion of the cloud services
catalog, 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 automation,
virtualization and cloud storage products in addition to
enhancements to Parallels control panel products at Parallels Summit. 

With Parallels software, service
providers can manage infrastructure, automate provisioning and bill
for a range of cloud services for SMBs, while offering
control panels for self-service for not only the provider but also
for their resellers, IT administrators and end users. With a 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 IaaS to SaaS.

Products highlighted
at the Summit
included:

• Announcing APS 2.0:

Parallels has 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."

• Announcing Parallels Automation 5.5:

It is expected to
ship later this year and will have APS 2.0 built in and integrated.
Navigation across billing and provisioning has been streamlined for
easy purchase and activation experience. The set of RESTful APIs has
been expanded. Updated core services include Linux and Windows
Hosting, Exchange 2013, Lync 2013 and cloud Infrastructure. This
makes Parallels Automation the platform for service providers and
developers to innovate and differentiate.

"Parallels Automation combined
with the APS standard, managed by KPN 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:

It reduces the
cost of high-availability storage. Offered as an upgrade for existing
Virtuozzo Containers and 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 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:

It makes it easy to
offer the cloud infrastructure services customers want. It includes
Virtuozzo Containers together with hypervisor technology and Cloud
Storage, combing all of the pieces to enable 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 HA
servers while reducing maintenance costs."

• Announcing Parallels Plesk
  Automation:

It is a
multi-server cloud automation solution enabling a 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 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 customers and differentiate their
offerings. It has hundreds of site designs for SMB businesses along
with a 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."

• Parallels Plesk Panel:
  

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

"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 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 user
experience across this array of APS applications supporting Parallels
products, the company is announcing a new Parallels APS certification
program for ISVs. This program will also provide 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 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, VP of SMB sales,
McAfee. "Parallels
Application Packaging Standard is compatible with McAfee cloud-based
solutions including McAfee SaaS 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, senior director Lync
service provider engineering team, Microsoft Corp. "Service
providers can now deliver rich Lync functionality, typically
available to larger enterprises, to their SMB customers as a hosted
service" 

Parallels primary and proprietary
research estimates that the global SMB market grew 30% in 2012 to $45
billion, with strong growth across all categories of cloud services.
The market is expected to expand at a 28% 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 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 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.