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The Joys of Cloud Storage demoed at Parallels Summit

by, Adam Bogobowicz, Sr. Director of Product Marketing, Parallels

 

If you missed all the fun at Parallels Summit in Vegas last week here is a quick recap. It was all about cloud storage. Pure software magic at its very best.

 

Just imagine a rack of servers converted with a software RAID device into a single storage cloud; with storage on all the nodes now available across the rack, available for any of the VMs or containers running on that rack, ready for any container of VM connected to that rack, or available as a pure store for any application or backup system connected to that rack.

 

Since my affinity is for virtualization, my personal favorite is the fact that software storage abstraction not only frees up all the dormant storage in the datacenter but that it enables High Availability as a simple outcome of that abstraction.

 

On the main stage at Caesars Palace, we demoed it using a server rack with 5 nodes. We ran a container streaming a video on node 2. Then we connected the video stream to the main projector and showed heart beats for all the nodes and the container right below.

 

All it took then to show High Availability was to parade unannounced in front of the audience on the main stage during the keynote and pull out both power cords from the node running a virtual container. At that point the management node, aka virtual RAID, rechecked availability of data on server  and confirmed that it was down and found the container with the video stream missing. It than used distributed data from remaining nodes to restart a container on a new node and 12th seconds later  re-started video streaming on the projector.

 

I know I should stop writing right here because it does not get much better than that, but here is a quick calc for all of you appreciating datacenter operations. If you are running mirror RAID on a single server you are probably averaging at least 4 service impacting incidents a year.  If it takes you 2 hours per incident to recover the service, your customers are experiencing 8 hours of downtime a year, or  about 2 “9’s” of availability on your service, leaving you with a bunch of unhappy customers, and you are a hoster who has lost business. 

 

Now if you run High Availability cloud storage on that same rack. You will still get same number of incidents, that is just life and stuff happens, but now you are going to recover service in 10-30sec. dropping your total yearly downtime to less than 5 minutes. Now you tell me how many 9s that is.

Now you can have your website and eat it too

by, Adam bogobowicz, Sr. Director of Product Marketing, Service Providers, Parallels

 

Why is getting a website from a hoster so complicated? Why do we ask our customers to jump through so many hoops to get a simple site up and running?

 

For example: Select from one of the three (great) plans, buy a domain, buy hosting, buy a site builder, we will give you 150GB of space with it (why do I care?) And what about security (is your business not secure?), backup (thought you would do that for me), and would you want fries with that?

 

Why does it need to be so byzantine? All I wanted was a website. I certainly do not need to jump through any of these hoops when I go to Facebook or LinkedIn to setup a site. This really hit home for me when my six grade son came home from school to show me the new website his student government body created.  I looked at the URL and it said Site.weebly.com. It was free, and easy enough for a bunch of 12 year olds to build.   We have lost them and lost them forever. Who do you think they will use when they want to build another site? Do you think it will be a hoster?

 

But why is this service available from the likes of Yola and Weebly and not from any of the established hosters? I believe there are two factors holding back the hosting industry from moving forward.

 

First there is historical attachment to the business model that got us here. We were (and still are) geeks selling to geeks on the cheap. We created a commodity business and now see decreasing margins.  As a result it is difficult for us to accept upfront costs of the freemium model  and unsure of the revenue impact if upsell cannot be secured at the purchase.  

 

Second there is a glaring gap in off-the-shelf software that would enable freemium and hybrid freemium models. Software supporting this business model was either developed outside of our industry, is proprietary, or delivered in a form that makes it not usable for hosters.

 

The good news is that with the release of Parallels Web Presence Builder Business Sites we are addressing the second problem. For the first time hosters on any automation platform  – a Parallels platform or not – will be able to setup freemium and hybrid freemium web creation businesses. Web Presence Builder Business Sites will eliminate any initial complex setup processes and will allow customers to create sites with just few clicks, publish a site for free, and will give the hoster an opportunity to upsell customers to domains, mobile functions, professional hosting, and vanilla milkshakes.

 

But even the right software is not going to make hosters comfortable with the freemium business model. We are very rational people and do not want to give away services for free and then hope to make it up in volume. And here is where we can learn from the Wixs, Yolas, and Weeblees. Take what is the best and leave the rest. What clearly works is the ability these businesses have to hook a customer first. Most people initially approach web presence with the need for a site.  If we want them as customers we cannot hit them with a complex plan first.  We need to make it easy to get them signed up and accelerate steps that lead to a functioning website with templates and relevant images and content. We also need to help them connect their new sites with social media and sync their presence with Facebook.

 

Now what about money? I see three strategies that a hoster can use to turn this new simple website creation experience into profit.

 

  1. Differentiate your offering and secure premium pricing
  2. Use Site creation as a loss leader to drive customer acquisition and upsell business
  3. Or incorporate it as a component of a value added bundle that will help you attract business  

 

With the differentiation strategy you lead with the value of web creation service. You do not give away sites for free. You ask for a premium prices because you can provision and deliver the value of easy- to- set-up sites. This approach limits your financial risks as you are not hosting sites for free and will help you drive improved revenues per user as well as drive down churn because your users are now less likely to drop off frustrated with the initial site creation process.  

 

The loss leader strategy requires stronger nerves and more upfront investment. This is the way Yolas and the like approach this problem. The big difference, however, is the fact that hosters are in a much better position to drive upsell process with strong portfolio of web related services and upsell know-how. We already know how to recognize if a site needs a dedicated URL, SSL certificate, support, design services, and can upsell users with shopping carts and business applications and many hosters can drive upsell to virtual servers. Web Presence Builder Business Sites will make easier to automatically identify and upsell to growing sites with page count throttling.

 

The third strategy is the most reactive but also the easiest to implement. What it suggests is accepting easy site creation as just the cost of doing business, a must-have for a user. In this case easy web creation is simply part of the core bundle of services delivered in some or all of the webhosting plans.

 

I do not see these three strategies as something our industry needs to consider. I see these as “do them” or “go out of business” options. Our customers are already voting with their clicks for the service they prefer, and we already see a fundamental shift in new site creation from traditional web hosting to the new breed of “web creation” providers. I hope to see all of Parallels partners on the other side of this great divide executing on one of our of the three web creation strategies in 2013.

Parallels is offering new services designed help hosting service providers grow their business

Parallels is pleased to announce several new services in 2013 that will empower service providers to grow their business.

 

  •  The Parallels Cloud Acceleration Services from Parallels Business Consulting include will help businesses with service definition, business processes, and go-to-market planning as well as offer leading practices forged from over 200 Parallels Automation deployments.
  • The 2013 SMB Cloud Insights research offers a new category of market intelligence around Cloud Strategy.  Using the power of Kano and conjoint analyses we are able provide you not just intelligence around market sizing and opportunities but also your best options for market and product strategy based on that intelligence. And later in 2013 we will further expand the value of our SMB Cloud Insights research by rolling out a new training product that distills the knowledge and insights from the SMB Cloud Insights research into tools you can use to train and certify your own staff.  This will allow you to drive market intelligence to support decision-making at every level of your company.
  • To further engage the over 350 new certified hosting partners, as well as those certified partners who have already joined our Partner Program, we’re extending the Partner Program and ParterNet to ISVs with our new Cloud Services Developer Program.  This includes the new Parallels Cloud Service Certification program which both provides more market opportunity to APS ISVs and, through additional levels of training and validation, a better end user experience for APS applications on Parallels products. 

Four pillars of APS 2.0 (or: a lesson in listening to what users want)

by, Brian Spector, CEO, CertiVox

 

Clearly, the application packaging standard APS has, over the last few years, gained significant traction. Driven by the SMB sector, which has embraced the procurement of enterprise-class computing capability in applications from managed service providers around the world, APS has become a critical element in the go-to-market strategy of hundreds of ISVs and thousands of Managed Service Providers.

 

CertiVox has embraced APS for some of its services, so I know first-hand its advantages – and some of its challenges. It’s fair to say that APS 1.2 didn’t deliver across the board.  But what’s new in APS 2.0?

 

 

Users are king (but who are they?)


Driven by the feedback that users have given, APS 2.0 provides a dramatic increase in functionality over its predecessor in four key areas – user interface, provisioning, single sign-on, and authentication.

 

There isn’t the space here to go through all of these, but let’s take authentication as just one example. At all levels of the cloud “chain,” this is becoming a critical consideration. Recent high-profile “smash and grab” attacks, for example, have used username and password vulnerabilities in websites and enterprise systems to steal user data.

 

These attacks have highlighted that it is simply no longer enough for users to have an identity that the system recognises as being legitimate. Instead, they need to be in a position to prove that it is an identity of which they are the rightful owner? In other words, is a user – every user – really who they say they are?

 

Once it is clear that the user is who they say they are, then it becomes possible for the hosting industry to provide, for the first time, a secure single sign-on experience across all provisioned services – and this is absolutely what users want and need. It enhances usability, improves cross-sell opportunities and reduces churn, so it’s pretty darned important for user and provider alike!

 

 

Authentication – inbuilt!


In APS 2.0, for the first time, a combination of multi-factor and multi-party authentication, as well as strong, end-to-end encryption, can be inbuilt. This authenticates users at all levels. Administrators, for example, can authenticate themselves to configure service options and manage the storefronts and choose applications for their business.

 

Service Providers can also resell the authentication services to their hosting customers, who can use them for all kinds of products and services of their own, to capitalise on the exploding demand for strong authentication across the industry.

 

And it’s simple. Using nothing more complex than a 4-digit PIN, users can sign in securely to all provisioned services to which they are entitled. APS federates the users’ credentials across the relevant services using a highly secure encrypted token.

 

Make no mistake; this is single sign-on, strong security, with reduced vulnerability and increased flexibility and scalability – in one package. And no username and password to forget!

 

APS 2.0 – want to find out more?


If you are at Parallels Summit 2013, come and see our Developer Track on 6th February at 10:30, and learn about Extending APS packages with Single Sign-On.


I’ll also be looking at some of the other “pillars” of APS 2.0 that I describe above – and explaining more about how they give developers, service providers, ISVs, partners, end-users and others the competitive edge in the cloud.

Four key factors to consider when choosing cloud backup delivery platform

by, Pavan Vyas, Product Marketing Manager, Asigra Inc

 

Making the right choice for cloud backup delivery platform – Why is it important?

 

When you are deciding to expand your practice to include backup and recovery services, the first and most important decision you face is choosing the right cloud backup platform.

 

This single decision governs the entire spectrum of possibilities related to the business – the service options that you can provide your customers, flexibility in supporting multiple sites and deployment models, competitive pricing options, and the support you can expect in promoting your services to the marketplace.  

 

This may seem like an exaggerated claim to you. However, having worked with service providers for over 26 years now in a 100% channel focused model and having supported them in building their businesses, we at Asigra can assure you that this is very much the case.

 

Your ability to support your customers’ backup and recovery needs, providing them the assurance that you can, not just backup all their enterprise data across their various devices, data centers and operating platforms, but can also recover the data in the event that they need it, is totally dependent on the platform that you choose. You also need to consider that your   customers will want the flexibility of different cloud deployment models – public, private or hybrid based on the changing needs of their business.  One size fits all may not be the best approach so you will want to have this flexibility.  Also, you will want to be able to support multitenant operations, set and achieve SLAs, and support varied operating platforms, therefore, the underlying platform needs to provide you with the flexibility and scalability to do so.

 

Your choice of cloud backup platform will also dictate the resources that you will need, the investments that you will need to make and the pricing that you can command for your services. All of these considerations will have a direct impact on the returns that you can expect on your investments and the profitability that you can enjoy by extending cloud backup and recovery services to existing and new customers. Finally and most importantly, you also need support beyond just technology capability to get to market quickly and easily with this new offering – and it is important for you to have the support of a larger marketing and business partnership to help you promote and grow your business.  A good platform provider will look to support you with extensive marketing and sales resources.

 

In short, 4 key factors to consider while choosing a cloud backup platform are:

  1. The platform needs to offer flexibility and scalability by offering support for multiple operating systems, databases, devices and hardware environments.
  2. The ability to offer different cloud deployment models – public, private and hybrid.
  3. A vendor who wants to be your business partner providing extensive sales and marketing resources.
  4. A vendor that lets you set your own margins.

 

This blog post just scratches the surface of what the decision entails and what you should be looking for. We know that you will want to know a lot more and may have a number of additional questions. To help you with that process, we have put together a resource for you on some of the things that you should look for and the questions that you should ask of your cloud platform provider. Download the free guide titled “How to choose a cloud backup delivery platform”.

 

 

 

 

The Death of Username and Password: ten truths to strike fear into the heart of service providers!

by, Brian Spector, CEO, Certivox

 

When my team started to work on a paper about the vulnerabilities of usernames and passwords recently, I decided we would defy typical cryptography vendor behaviour. Instead of a technical whitepaper full of architecture diagrams and mathematical notation, I told my team I wanted them to do wide-ranging research to argue a cause, in order to support a business case. The material they researched became The Death of Username and Password, a unique new study launched exclusively at Parallels Summit 2013.

 

Tenfold shame

The paper explores ten core truths that show the weaknesses of username and password so clearly, that when I found out what they had unearthed, I frightened myself.

Did you know, for example, that the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers) – one of the most respected organisations in the world – lost over 100,000 user logins to hackers because it was storing username and password information in a file on its website? And that the areas of the site that were compromised potentially included sensitive Western military engineering data?

And had you considered that the speed and ease with which hackers can now access username and password files has so increased the volume of confidential user data being illegally traded online that this data now sells for next to nothing? (European credit card data, for example, will sell for around $3 per card on the internet – US and Canadian, a mere $1). Like I said, scary stuff.

 

Not just a consumer story

But it was the data on users’ real-world experience of actually using passwords that really made me wince, because its consequences aren’t restricted to consumers or hobbyists. Rather, it’s an issue for every single internet and cloud user, from the provisioning supplier to the individual end-user – and every party in between.

Users forget passwords. Consider this:

  • ·         64% of end users have written down their password at least once
  • ·         70% of people do not use a unique password for each website

More worryingly, users routinely pick passwords that are laughably weak, in an effort to increase their memorability. A recent security breach at Yahoo, for example, showed that thousands of users’ passwords were either “password”, “welcome”, “123456” or “ninja”!

 

What gives?

The world is perpetuating a login method that is inherently weak, has been repeatedly compromised, is single-handedly responsible for making the thousands of dollars’ worth of credit tradable on the internet for less than the price of a packet of cigarettes – and that everybody hates and finds difficult to use anyway.

Why? Well, read the paper first. You can download it here: https://certivox.com/death-username-password/ Then come and find me on Booth 704 and tell me.

Because I’m still none the wiser.

 

Our partner theatre/developer track

Come and hear what we’ve got to say here:

  • ·         Partner Theatre –  5th Feb  at 12:45 – Growing Your Revenues with Single Sign-On, Multi-Factor Authentication for the Cloud and Mobile  – Frank Boening (CertiVox)
  • ·         Developer Track – 6th Feb at 10:30 – Extending APS packages with Single Sign-On – Brian Spector and Gene Myers (CertiVox)

Parallels Plesk Automation continues to get even better

by Ted Hu, Director of Technical Product Marketing, Parallels

Founded on Parallels Panel 11 technology, the industry’s premier multi-server hosting solution, Parallels Plesk Automation 11.1, continues to get even better. Earlier this week, Microupdate #5 (MU#5) released with more than 10 software fixes, making Parallels Plesk 11.1 more stable than ever, while also delivering additional key features that boost the day-to-day productivity of shared hosters operating Parallels Plesk Automation. One of these key features is the ability to move subscriptions between nodes. Useful for when shared hosters want to transfer web hosting from one node to another, this is relevant in two main operational scenarios:  

 

  • ·         The first is when there are a lot of domains on the node which often then perform very slowly due to excess workloads that result.
  • ·         Another is when shared hosters want to repair and upgrade server hardware without any downtime. For example, this feature helps shared hosters avoid downtime by enabling easy moving of hosting to another service node allowing for the upgrade of the original hardware server.  

 

It is now possible to move such services and subscriptions

  • ·         from an Apache node to an Apache node;
  • ·         from a MySQL node to a MySQL node;
  • ·         from an Apache + MySQL node to an Apache + MySQL node;
  • ·         from an Apache + MySQL node to a node running Apache + a node running MySQL;
  • ·         from an Apache node and a MySQL node to a single node running Apache + MySQL.

 

Another feature in MU#5 is the ability to define and customize a host’s DNS template structure. Hosters may now override a predefined DNS template encapsulating a set of DNS records which will get applied for each domain. And last but certainly not least, new service node roles are supported: Apache web server + Postfix mail server + MySQL database server; Apache web server + Postfix mail server + MySQL database server + PostgreSQL database server; IIS web server + MS SQL Server 2008 database server. For more details, view the Release Notes.

 

Couple this with the release of Microupdate #4 last week that enables support for the popular SmarterMail Exchange-level server software solution and provides for the automation, in addition to registration, of Microsoft SQL Server 2008 installations, clearly Parallels is making significant ongoing investments. These investments have grown from the momentous Parallels Plesk Panel 11 launch that continues to be energized by the feedback we are receiving from our enthusiastic customers and partners. This feedback drives our engineering path forward.

 

Because of these reasons and more, I welcome the enthusiasm Parallels Plesk Automation has received from our community of shared hosters and the genuine excitement our customers have about the new growth opportunities Parallels Plesk Automation affords their businesses. I am confident these ongoing investments in new features and platform enhancements and the upcoming waves of powerful multi-server hosting innovations to come will yield powerful capabilities which will enable Parallels customers to profit from the cloud like never before.

 

Single sign-on: not only a game-changer, but a money-maker!

by Brian Spector, CEO, CertiVox

Time was when SSO simply meant being able to automatically pass login credentials from one application to another, so that a user could work across several applications at once, without having to sign into each of them separately. Remember that?

But a sea-change is taking place within SSO. The notion of logging in once in order to use many different applications is still at its core, but the nature of that login is changing radically. It is no longer sufficient to have the right login credentials. Instead, you have to be identified as the individual to whom those correct login credentials rightfully belong.

As we put it in our paper The Death of Username and Password, “On the internet, nobody cares if you’re a dog – but they do need to know which dog you are!”

 

Multi-factor magic

SSO’s new-found robustness lies in multi-factor authentication – defined as something you have, plus something you know, plus an additional identifying factor. Think of an ATM – it authenticates you on the basis of something you have (your bank card), something you know (your PIN), and, additionally, the information contained on the card’s magnetic strip. One is useless without the others.

The challenge has always been in translating this into a software-based approach, enabling an online user to authenticate simply by using their computer. But this capability now exists. With nothing more complex than a browser, a PIN (entered using an on-screen pinpad) and an automatically generated cryptographic key, users can authenticate online more securely than when they use their ATM!

The scalability potential here would previously have been unimaginable. Usernames and passwords, with their fixed 1-to-1 relationships, stored in a file, are intrinsically too risky to scale (as LinkedIn’s loss of over 6,000,000 logins to a hacker showed!)

Multi-factor authentication, on the other hand, provided it is built on something called “elliptic curve cryptography-based authenticated key agreement protocols” – phew! –  can be robust enough to scale to many millions of users. This is because it simultaneously authenticates personal identity, the identity of the browser and the identity of the devices being used, without recourse to a fixed 1-to-1 relationship. If one of these factors is incorrect or missing, authentication can’t happen.

 

Scalable  = saleable!

 

For this self-same reason – scalability – service providers and their partners are suddenly into a whole new ball game here. If scale is no barrier to use, then it’s also no barrier to sale. So, excitingly, service providers and their partners now have the option of reselling the very same authentication services that they themselves use, so that their customers, in turn, can use them to secure their own end-users.

This is one snowball effect that should leave all of us feeling warm inside! If you want to learn more, we’re on Booth 704, or you can come to one of the technical or business sessions listed below:

  • ·         Technical Track – 4th Feb  between 08:15-17:00 –
  • ·         Partner Theatre –  5th Feb  at 12:45 – Growing Your Revenues with Single Sign-On, Multi-Factor Authentication for the Cloud and Mobile  – Frank Boening (CertiVox)
  • ·         Developer Track – 6th Feb at 10:30 – Extending APS packages with Single Sign-On – Brian Spector and Gene Myers (CertiVox)

Evolution of the Email Archiving market in 2013: Cloud Computing or Hybrid Solutions?

By, Marilena Dobre, Marketing Coordinator, SpamExperts

 

The end of last year has brought exciting predictions for the cloud environment in 2013. Service capabilities involving cloud computing are now setting the benchmark in every aspect of the IT industry. In the email security market where SpamExperts activates, Email Archiving for back-up and compliance is an equally hot topic of debate. The question hence arises what the opinions are around having email archived in the cloud and where this market is moving towards.

 

The immediate benefits of cloud-based email archiving are straightforward: no hardware required, free up local resources, and “infinite” redundant storage capacity. However, once you dive into the subject, dilemmas around privacy and security arise.

 

Email can concern sensitive data and information. Company contracts, trademarks, patents, upgrades, discoveries, pricing, employees data, third parties information, and more are now circulated via email. Are traditional enterprise buyers ready to let all this crucial data moved away from their premises to the cloud, into the «hands» of a 3rd party? How about data storage legislation and location?

 

To answer these questions, let us look at who is using email archiving and for what purpose. In general, we can distinct email archiving users between users for compliance reasons and for back-up reasons. Typically the larger organizations, institutes, and companies operating in regulated industries look at email archiving from a compliance perspective where questions around storage location and eDiscovery are dominating deployment and product choices. Email archiving offered by hosting providers to the ‘store around the corner’/ typical SMB client tend to be focused around the back-up nature of email archiving and hence deployment and product choices are often depending on price, convenience, and availability. Typically, cloud solutions fit nicely to this latter group of email archiving adopters.

 

According to Symantec’s «Avoiding the Hidden Costs of Cloud 2013 survey«, cloud compliance is quite complicated for organizations. The study included business and IT executives at 3,236 organizations in 29 countries and revealed that nearly a quarter of these organizations have been fined for privacy violations in the cloud within the past 12 months. One-third of those surveyed have received eDiscovery requests for cloud information, out of which two-thirds were unable to timely respond and have missed the deadlines, potentially leading to fines or compromised legal actions. These findings suggest a local deployment under full control and management of the organization in question may be a preferred deployment method for an email archiving solution.

 

According to Gartner’s «Predicts 2013: Cloud Computing Becomes an Integral Part of IT«, cloud computing has fragmented public opinion into two viewpoints, and this is getting worse. The fragmentation is a split between the desire for enterprise-grade cloud computing (favored by IT departments) versus consumer-grade cloud computing (favored by business and individual users).

 

We can therefore conclude at this point that Cloud is new and sexy, but, as far as the Email Archiving market is concerned, it is not (yet?) for everyone. A cloud based email archiving solution is not yet a sure win. The key differentiators amongst email archiving providers will remain hybrid deployment solutions, security, compliance, and easy access to the archived data. Furthermore, for hosting providers in particular that are looking to serve the general SMB market, integration with their current infrastructure and backend are key decision making factors.

Parallels Plesk Panel 11 six month after launch

by, Adam Bogobowicz, Senior Director of Marketing, Parallels

 

Our goal is to make easy-to-use and feature-rich products that are a delight to our customers. That being said, for a well architected, engineered and designed product to make a difference and gain acceptance, it has to do more than delight its end users. For a panel product to be successful, it has to do two more things. First, it needs to enchant hundreds of our partners who recommend and deliver it to the customers as a service on their infrastructure. Second, it needs to make a difference for the community of users who support it, use it, recommended it and help make it better.

 

With Parallels Plesk Panel 11 we have experienced the fastest adoption rate of any of our panel products ever. With over three times the adoption rate of any previous version, it is supported by a vast majority of infrastructure providers who make it available on physical hardware, and any imaginable virtual environment, from highly efficient container technology to open and commercial hypervisors. This level of adoption is higher than market growth rates or historical product adoption rates.

I attribute the success of Parallels Plesk Panel 11 to three fundamental factors.

 

  • Plesk 11 has reached a new level of usability that makes life for server administrators in small businesses meaningfully better.

 

  • Unprecedented support from a family of Parallels partners who deliver Plesk 11 to customers because the product itself has made major gains in supportability and security.

 

  • A new level of excitement from a community of small hosters, who are not only delighted by the maturity and completeness of the hosting features, but now are also excited by the growth path that Parallels Plesk Panel enables when  combined with a multi-server solution delivered by Parallels Plesk Automation.

 

With Plesk 11, we have reached a new level of visual and functional simplicity that allows administrators of any skill level to effectively execute core business tasks without the need to learn, or get support, from Linux or Windows server administrators. For example, we are able to adjust the level of UI complexity at the product setup time and match it with administrator skill levels. As one of our customers commented, “Everyone who is not a full time IT person should use Plesk. [I’ve] been using it for about 10 years and it gets better with every release. Since I moved from physical servers to AWS, it makes managing your server a breeze.”

 

This new level of usability translates directly into experiences of service providers delivering Plesk 11 on their infrastructure. It increases customer satisfaction and cuts down on support volume and costs. With Plesk 11, we are experiencing support ticket counts three times lower than with previous product versions. It is no wonder then that when you combine this with easy migration from Panel 10 to Panel 11 and hardened security of Panel 11, we have experienced unprecedented launch support with 80 of Parallels’ top partners becoming Parallels Plesk Panel 11 launch partners actively promoting value of the product to new and existing customers.

 

Most important, however, is the support this product has received from the community of shared hosters. With the announcement of Parallels Plesk Automation, a multi-server solution based on Panel 11 technology, our most important customers are genuinely excited about new growth opportunities for their businesses. Having once been locked into a single server hosting solution and paying with high administrative overhead for the limitation of the software, hosters love the fact that they can now use Plesk 11 as a platform for a new level of efficiency and growth enabled with Parallels Plesk Automation. And this story will only get more exciting when Plesk Automation is extended with new revenue generating services, like cloud VPSs, syndication and enablement of SaaS services with another exciting technology APS 2.0.

 

Lessons learned from Panel 11 launch and momentum and feedback from our customers and partners are driving our engineering path forward, and we are fully committed to this winning formula. I could not be more optimistic about the value the next wave of innovation will bring to our customers.