Category Archives: APS Partners

applications, APS, APS Partners, Cloud Services, Hosting, Parallels Summit, Software as a service

Just providing best- of – breed is no longer good enough

By John Zanni, Vice President, Marketing and Alliances, Parallels

 

In this ever changing cloud environment, service providers are telling us that whenever they think they have a handle on what SMBs want, SMBs indicate their “wants” are expanding. What this means is that service providers cannot linger on what was a key service last year. SMBs are constantly trying to grow their business and furthering their understanding of their customers, so as their customers branch out into new territories whether accounting, health care, entertainment, retail (you get the picture), SMBs will look to service providers to be nimble enough to accommodate those developments with cloud offerings they can use – and use with ease. In fact, best-of-breed is no longer as relevant or as meaningful as are specificity and ease of use.

 

Luckily for everyone, need generates innovation and development. There is a burgeoning of cloud services applications for a world of vertical markets, and many SMBs are looking for the application that specifically serves their needs rather than the most well-known or most often used applications.

 

From open source applications to complex solutions, through Application Packaging Standards, ISVs can create any applications that are needed or can be invented. (You can learn more about APS at appstandards.org.) Of note, this is an open standard, and Parallels does not need to approve an application for it to become available through APS.

 

There are a number of examples of such offerings in the Parallels APS catalogue, including:

  • ·         MoySklad – a Russian business that produces a contact resource management and accounting service
  • ·         SpamExperts – an Anti-virus/anti-spam/archiving solution very popular throughout Europe
  • ·         BackupAgent – produces backup services for hosters and service providers and is popular in Europe and Asia.

 

Service Providers have access to these cloud services and applications and can easily enable them on Parallels Plesk Panel or Parallels Automation service providers; it then simply becomes a matter of marketing those applications to their customers with those particular requirements.   

 

For service providers looking for more information on how to grow their business through the bundling of new applications that live in the cloud, Parallels Summit 2013, Feb 4-6, at Caesars Palace, Las Vegas is the place to be. Hundreds of ISVs with be demonstrating their services. There will be technical, developer, and business tracks on how to enable and promote applications in the cloud along with best practices on working with Parallels products that push your business up the ladder. Be there to experience and assess what you could use for your customers.

 

APS, APS Partners, Guest Blog

Parallels and CloudFlare Deliver the Perfect Upsell: Web Performance and Site Security for SMBs

 

Parallels is pleased to announce the latest milestone in our alliance with CloudFlare, a global leader in Web performance and security.  CloudFlare for service providers selling Parallels Plesk Panel (versions 11 and 10.4) is now available through the APS catalog. It takes less than 5 minutes to install and comes in two plans: CloudFlare Free and CloudFlare Performance Plus. Parallels is now making it extremely easy for service providers to upsellCloudFlair’s enterprise-grade website performance accelerator with built-in security, perfect forsmall and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) who are concerned about cloud security, yet also seek competitive advantages like Web acceleration for their sites.

 

In addition, CloudFlair delivers many operational benefits to Parallels Plesk Panel service providers by reducing server load and bandwidth usage, while protecting their servers from DDoS attacks. On average, a website on CloudFlare loads twice as fast for its visitors, experiences 65% fewer requests and can save upwards of 60% of bandwidth.  There’s even an automatic IPv4/6 gateway, which enables site availability for visitors on IPv6 networks, while keeping IPv4 infrastructure intact until you’re ready to migrate. 

 

Improved website performance and lower operational costs are only part of the CloudFlair story.  SMBs continue to cite security concerns as a major barrier for adopting cloud-based applications and services.  By securing their websites from potential threats, service providers can rest assured their hosting customers are better protected, while their end user site owners concentrate on managing their content and running their businesses.  “The new CloudFlareplugin for Parallels Plesk Panel allows for quick and easy deployment,” said Gerado Altman, National Partner & Reseller Manager at Velocity Host. “We would love to keep CloudFlare as our own secret weapon, but really the more users who are on the network the greater the power CloudFlare has to wield against malicious attacks and help all those who use their services.”

CloudFlare aims to bring premium performance and security services to every website. Today, over 500,000 websites use CloudFlare, ranging from blogs and SMB e-commerce storefronts to governmental agencies and Fortune 500 companies.  Interested Parallels Plesk Panelservice providers can download CloudFlare today via the APS catalog.  Not a Parallels Partner yet?  Sign up here (even at the no obligation Member level), then head down the path to greater profitability with Parallels Plesk Panel and CloudFlare.

 

Michael Monu

Senior Business Development Manager, Parallels Service Provider Marketing

 

APAC-Partners, APS, APS Partners, Cloud Services, Parallels APAC Summit, Parallels Automation, Parallels Cloud Services

Powering Cloud Automation Through Partnerships

 

When SoftLayer began back in 2005, the term “cloud computing” was rarely used if at all. The founders of SoftLayer had an ambitious vision and plan to build a service platform that could easily automate, scale and meet the demands of the most sophisticated IT users. They were obviously onto something. Since then, we’ve emerged as the world’s largest privately held Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) provider, helping the next generation of web savvy entrepreneurs realize their dreams. But we didn’t do it alone. We had partnerships in place—including working with Parallels.

 

Today, the industry is trying to scramble and figure out how this “new” IT shift will work out. Our partners at Parallels had a similar ambitious undertaking—trying to automate and enable a complete gamut of hosting and cloud services. This created a framework for our partnership. We worked with their engineering and sales teams, starting back in 2005, which resulted in Parallels Plesk Panel being offered as an option on every SoftLayer server. That was just the beginning. We are now deployingParallels Automation for hosting partners, and have plans to integrate with the Application Packaging Standard for delivering the broadest array of cloud and hosted applications.  Plans to integrate with other products like the forthcoming Parallels Cloud Server 6.0 (now in beta for trials) are also on the horizon. It all comes down to helping hosting companies and other joint customers thrive and succeed.

 

To find out more about our partnership with Parallels and how it can help streamline your entry into cloud computing, click here. We were also the only “Diamond” sponsor at the recent Parallels Summit 2012 APAC in Singapore this year, and look forward to Parallels Summit 2013 in Las Vegas early next year.  We share a heritage and understanding with Parallels borne from a need to simplify and solve IT problems on a broad scale. Now that’s what I call a like-minded partnership.

 

George Karidis

Chief Strategy Office

Softlayer

 

APS, APS Partners, Cloud Services, Events, Marketing, Parallels Automation, Saas, service provider, Small Businesses, Software as a service, Webinar

APS and SaaS Webinar for Service Providers featuring Solgari, Ecwid, VMWare and Quest

 

Our recent case study describes how leading Hong Kong hosting service provider, Pacificnet Hosting Limited (PacHosting), used Parallels Application Packaging Standard (APS) to broaden its portfolio and reduce time-to-market for new services. With APS, PacHosting was able to create new revenue opportunities in the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) space and rapidly ramp-up services. We have arranged for some leaders in the SaaS field to explain how your business can profit like PacHosting by offering the most in-demand applications to small and medium business customers. This is a great opportunity for service providers to learn how to easily market and sell high-demand commercial applications and services, and how Parallels can help providers of any size be successful in increasing ARPU and reducing customer churn.

 

This month’s scheduled presentations include:

 

Solgari – Discover the fantastic opportunity to provide Solgari Hosted PBX & Voice Services to your business customers

Ecwid – Find out how you can grow your ecommerce base with our 100% AJAX widget shopping cart

VMware – Learn how Zimbra Collaboration Server allows you to offer an advanced enterprise email & calendaring solution at a low TCO

Quest – Discover the many benefits of Quest’s OnDemand Migration for Email

 

Webinar starts Tuesday, May 8, 2012 at 8am PDT. Don’t miss it – Register now!