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Parallels Summit 2010 Keynote: Parallels' CEO Pledges to Help Cloud Services Providers "Innovate, Optimize and Grow To Serve Small Businesses and Profit from the Cloud"
Parallels CEO Serguei Beloussov outlined the company’s vision for the Cloud in his keynote presentation at Parallels Summit 2010. Beloussov advised more than 1100 service provider, telco, VAR and ISV attendees to recognize the huge opportunity presented by the small business need for Cloud services, a market which he predicted will grow to nearly $19 billion by 2013. To meet this considerable opportunity and "Profit from the Cloud", Beloussov explained Cloud services providers and ISVs must innovate, optimize and grow to develop full-service offerings. He pledged Parallels’ ongoing and increased support for this through the company’s investment in partnerships and complete realignment to a Cloud services-oriented company structure.
"Considerable growth is predicted in Cloud services for small businesses as they provide a low cost, easy solution for these organizations, who need an increasing range of IT services, but have very little IT knowledge and limited budgets," said Beloussov. "The complexity of IT requirements can easily become an expensive and time-consuming distraction from the core business. Buying services through the Cloud removes both the significant initial expense of buying in-house IT operations, and simplifies decision-making as small businesses can get a range of business IT services from a single provider at a low monthly subscription rate.
"For Cloud services providers, this represents a significant opportunity; however, it is essential for businesses to innovate, optimize and grow if they are going to compete successfully and increase profitability. Innovation is critical in order to keep meeting evolving customer needs: Cloud services providers need to drive better bundled services and develop new "sticky" offerings, while ISVs need to refine their technology. This will help them open new revenue streams and attract new customers," added Beloussov.
"To grow and be successful, Cloud services providers need to offer a complete range of services for small businesses. Improving the quality of existing services and offering customer loyalty programs are critical steps in building customer confidence and growing the loyal customer base," said Beloussov. During the keynote, Beloussov announced that Parallels will continue to invest in supporting its partners achieve these goals, providing support for marketing, training, certification and in other areas of the business beyond the technology itself. In addition, the company is realigning its business and engineering functions to focus on the service areas that are important to its partners and customers. The company will focus on four key services areas spanning and encompassing Parallels’ product portfolio: Shared Web Hosting Services; Messaging and Collaboration; Virtualized Infrastructure Services (VPS); and SaaS and Other Applications. Each of these services groups will be led by a senior Parallels’ executive championing the space and working closely with Parallels’ partners to identify and meet their needs.
The Shared Web Hosting Services group will be led by Craig Bartholomew, VP of Panels at Parallels, who brings considerable expertise from over 20 years as a business leader at Microsoft. Craig’s group will be working with partners to help them develop their Shared Web Hosting Services offering, encouraging the innovation and optimization that will enable them to grow and retain their customer base. The service area will be supported by a range of Parallels products, including Parallels Plesk Panel 9.5, Parallels Hosting Panel 10 (to be launched later this year) and Parallels Automation High Efficiency Shared Hosting.
The Messaging and Collaboration group will be led by Oleg Melnikov, one of the founders and VP of Automation at Parallels. As a veteran of the service provider space, he has a strong understanding of the opportunities and challenges that face them and will be working closely with Parallels’ partners and customers to help them take advantage of the trend towards unified communications and increased levels of collaboration so they can grow their service offerings for greater up-sell and cross-sell opportunities. In 2010, this service area will be supported by Parallels Automation developments providing support for Microsoft Hosted Exchange 2010, MS OCS and VOIP services.
The Virtual Infrastructure Services group will be led by Amir Sharif, VP of Virtualization at Parallels, who bring considerable product management experience, most recently from VMware. Amir’s group will be helping Parallels’ partners and customers innovate and grow by offering profitable virtualized services; predicted to be the biggest area of growth in Cloud services in the next five years. This service area will see developments across Parallels’ virtualization products in 2010, including the launch of Parallels Server for Mac Bare Metal Edition at Parallels Summit 2010, an update for Parallels Virtuozzo Containers (version 4.6) and the launch of Cloud Utility Computing later in the year.
The SaaS and Other Applications group will be led by Matt Domo, CTO at Parallels, who brings considerable expertise as a former general manager at Amazon Web Services and Microsoft veteran. This group will focus on helping new ISVs find new channels to market, enabling Cloud services providers to innovate new bundled services offerings and grow their up-sell and cross-sell opportunities. To support this service area, Parallels is introducing Parallels Partner Marketplace v2 and Application Packaging Standard 1.2 at Parallels Summit 2010.
About Parallels
Parallels (parallels.com) is a worldwide leader in virtualization and automation software that optimizes computing for consumers, businesses, and cloud services providers across all major hardware, operating systems, and virtualization platforms. Founded in 1999, Parallels is a fast-growing company with more than 700 employees in North America, Europe, and Asia.
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