Category Archives: Cloud Services

Cloud Services, Cloud Storage

IBM’s Comprehensive Cloud Initiative

IBM announced earlier that it’s new initiative aims to help customers manage the hybrid cloud world. The hybrid cloud describes a mixed environment that includes a combination of public and private cloud resources as well as on-premise data centers.

 

Angel Diaz, the VP of cloud architecture and technology at IBM, says that the main idea is to make it as simple as possible to manage resources across a range of cloud platforms and types. Between public and private clouds, data centers and cloud to cloud will ideally behave as a single infrastructure, no matter where these are located.

 

IBM is trying to address an issue that every company faces at some point during their switch to using the cloud as most companies have a hybrid of cloud computing types. They are finding it difficult to access information from different sources. Diaz has said that there are three main problem areas. First, there needs to be a way to integrate data with the company’s systems. Second, they want to make it easier to access the data regardless of location or platform. Lastly, delivery of data to the device and location it is needed even if bits of information are on different platforms.

 

Along with these problems, IBM has announced several ways to solve these problems. The first solution involves container technology. IBM has partnered with Docker to create IBM-defined Dockerized containers for enterprises. These containers are designed to work no matter if the applications are on location or in the cloud, and to integrate processes like security, governance and a system of records.

 

The second solution is something called IBM DataWorks.  This was designed to help developers work with different sets of data by mapping connections between applications and locations to pull the data together in a secure manner automatically. IBM wants to tie this into Watson to provide access to API’s for intelligent use of the data. Diaz said that Watson does not just make sense of the data, but it can also draw correlations and give probability of what is right and what isn’t.

 

Another important piece is BlueMix Local. This allows a way to setup BlueMix, an IBM platform as a service offering, in a way that lets you choose where to store the application’s components. It will allow you to store these components in the public cloud as well as on-premise and cloud sources depending on the individual or company requirements. IBM’s BlueMix is trying to provide visibility, control and application in a seamless manner.

 

IBM is working with multiple companies to solve these cloud issues, and Diaz says it is important for companies to work together to overcome customer frustrations. IBM will continue to team up with other companies to solve these complex issues.

The post IBM’s Comprehensive Cloud Initiative appeared first on Cloud News Daily.

Cloud Services, E-Commerce, Ecwid, Parallels Web Presence Builder

E-commerce: The Secret Sauce for SMBs and Hosters

If you’ve sat in front of a television lately, chances are that you have seen an advertisement for a Do-It-Yourself website for your small business. Who would believe that in this hyper-wired world we live in that some businesses still don’t have a website? Clearly some don’t. And the fact that we’re getting bombarded with these offers every night during prime time shows you just how significant an opportunity exists.

DIY websites are all the rage. For the end-user, they are low-cost, low-risk, full-featured, and easy-to-use. For hosters, they are a great way to attract and retain new SMB customers, and to eventually sell them more services and increase ARPU. And, because of intuitive WYSIWYG design and editing tools, they are also fairly easy to support.

The jump from having no web presence to having a basic website can be dramatic for a SMB – suddenly they are discoverable and contactable – but it’s not the same as having a storefront with goods and services available for purchase 24/7/365. It’s like the difference between having a ‘business’ or a ‘business card’ at your web address.

Enter e-commerce, SaaS-style.

Cloud Services, Industry & Market Insights, Japan SMB, SMB Cloud Insights

Japanese SMB Cloud Journey Accelerates in 2013

Accounting for more than 99 percent of all local enterprises, Japanese small and medium businesses (SMBs) account for a substantial share of Japan’s economic output. Traditionally, Japanese SMBs largely operated as suppliers for large enterprises as part of the keiretsu system of integrated supply chain groups. With some exceptions, SMBs tend to focus on the domestic market and export indirectly via the value chains of large multinational enterprises and general trading houses.

Cloud Acceleration Services, Cloud Services, Onboarding, SMB Cloud Insights

Get It Right The First Time: The Importance of Customer Onboarding

by Duncan Robinson, Cloud Market Strategist, Parallels

 

 

Increase revenue per user and reduce churn – two of the key business drivers for service providers moving into the cloud. Customers who already have a relationship with service providers are a key target for cross-selling cloud services for good reason. Research by Parallels SMB Cloud Insights ™ shows that SMB customers are highly likely to consider their existing supplier for cloud services and 68% of US small businesses have a strong preference to buy more services from a single supplier. All good news for traditional service providers entering the cloud services market. However, making the most of this opportunity relies on delivering a great end-to-end customer experience. 

 

A crucial (and often overlooked) part of this is customer onboarding. Customer onboarding is the process of setting up the customer’s service once they have completed their purchase. This is often done by phone appointment but can be done onsite (usually for an additional fee). This is a critical step as customers often don’t know how to set up and get the most from cloud services. Service providers need to take the lead in ensuring that customers have their services properly set up and help them to get the most out of them by providing advice on getting maximum business benefit.

 

To avoid churn, customers need to feel like they are getting value for their services. Imagine a scenario where a loyal, existing customer with 10 employees buys a new cloud service. None of the employees activate the service as they are unsure how to do it and eventually switch it off. This means the customer has been paying for something they have never used and are likely to feel pretty aggrieved at their service provider. Something meant to decrease churn could end up driving an increase!

 

The key to avoiding this is to build a high quality onboarding process into your end-to-end customer experience. We have seen great examples where service providers have implemented proper onboarding processes with impressive results. One such provider measures (on a weekly basis) customers who have been properly activated have a 90% lower churn rate than those who are inactive.

 

You can choose to do this in-house or outsource to a specialist partner. Either way it does require investment but will payback through lower churn, a reduction in ongoing calls to customer service and importantly higher customer satisfaction.

 

The message is clear: get it right the first time – invest upfront for happy customers and lower churn.

 

Learn more about Parallels Cloud Acceleration Services.

 

 

 

Cloud Services, Parallels Business Automation Standard, Shopping Experience

How Important is Online Store Design and Usability to Your Sales? Extremely.

Lessons Learned: Online Store Design Makes a Huge Difference to Order Completion and Conversion Rate.

 

Back in 2008 I was managing a hosting company in Russia. Our operations were fully automated by Parallels Business Automation Standard (PBAS), we were offering a full range of state-of-the-art hosting plans, and all of our hosting plans were competitively priced. Our sales were decent, but not spectacular, and they definitely weren’t growing as quickly as we wanted.

 

So we launched a research project to better understand our customer’s shopping experience and to pinpoint any problems. It shocked us to learn that for certain products up to 70% of our customers were not finishing their purchase. Clearly, something was happening during the purchasing process that created a barrier to completing transactions.

 

At the time we were using the standard store integration in PBAS, which was not necessarily designed to “sell,” but rather to show PHP code and PBAS API usage. User interface decisions made by programmers with knowledge of the internal code structure were perplexing to customers trying to use the store in a real-world environment.

 

To go deeper with our research we added a Kayako online chat button into every page of our online store.

 

Here are the main discoveries we made, and the changes we implemented to address these issues:

1. Customers don’t like to make difficult choices, and were simply “opting out” and leaving our store. We believed our typical customers were more or less “system administrators with degrees in Computer Science.” We wanted to impress them with flexibility and lots of interesting options, but when we started chatting with them we realized some of them, had no clue what “SLM memory limit” meant. So we reduced the number of options, renamed our resources and added simple descriptions. In short, we had to redesign our store so any person could understand and use it.

2. Multiple Call-To-Action elements were confusing and scaring regular customers away. Many customers were clicking on buttons and menu items in the shopping cart, which lead them away from the purchase process and even away from our web site. We wanted our customers to be 100% focused on the purchase, and determined that any additional information was simply defocusing clients from completing the purchase process.

3. Our customers’ emotional reaction to our web site was the fundamental driver in their purchasing decision. It became clear that long registration and configuration pages in our store were significantly reducing our sales.

4. A very slow shopping cart experience will make some people leave. Why? Because customers conclude that if the hoster’s own store is slow, their hosting will be even slower. So we had to increase our store performance.

 

It took us two months to make all these changes in the standard PBAS store, but the following results were well worth the effort. In the six months following the store changes:

•    Abandoned shopping carts were reduced by 57%
•    Online store sales increased by more than 150%

 

We shared all this information with Parallels PBAS developers who used the feedback, as well as feedback from other PBAS customers, to improve online store usability and functionality.

 

Today, PBAS Store is a ready-to-use and powerful tool. Released this month as part of Parallels Business Automation Standard 4.3.4, which includes:

•    Simple, single-page order processing to reduce ordering time
•    Redesigned, simplified, and streamlined interface
•    Easy-to-add online chat services
•    Ability to choose which resources are visible and add meaningful descriptions to them

•    Support for stand-alone deployment on a high-performance dedicated server to increase store performance
•    Many other enhancements

These enhancements demonstrate how Parallels learns from customer’s feedback to help its Partners grow their business. I am very proud to be part of this company.

I invite you to learn more about Parallels Business Automation Standard by visiting the PBAS web page, checking out the new store demo, viewing our recent webinar and upgrading to PBAS 4.3.4 today.

 

~ Alex Goncharov, Sr. Director, Product Marketing, Parallels

 

Cloud PBX, Cloud Services, Industry & Market Insights, SMB Cloud Insights

Cloud PBX Services Poised to Take Off

by John McMillan, Director, Partner Business Consulting, Parallels

 

SMBs make up 99% of businesses worldwide, and they are adopting cloud services. According to Parallels SMB Cloud Insights™ research, the most commonly adopted cloud services include: web hosting, security add-ons, and a wide range of SMB-focused SaaS applications. Parallels research predicts that, on average, SMBs will have seven cloud services by end of 2016, growing from four services consumed today.

 

One service that will enjoy broad SMB adoption is cloud PBX. Cloud PBX services are a classic example of the cloud’s transformational impact on the SMB segment, allowing SMBs to have access to an enterprise-class communications experience without the overhead cost and maintenance of a traditional in-house PBX system. Cloud PBX typically includes mobile integrations, an automated attendant, and web conferencing – all packaged and priced for SMBs.

 

 

In the US, up to 50% of SMBs who have an existing in-house PBX system today and up to 30% who have regular land-lines are interested in switching to cloud PBX services. It is easy to see why – cloud PBX services are a good solution for the following key SMB needs:

 

1) Projecting a professional, enterprise-like image by providing a single phone number for the business, extensions for employees, and simple call routing.

2) Increasing customer intimacy by quickly connecting clients to the right resource using an automated attendant.

3) Increasing worker productivity by extending cloud PBX features to mobile devices, providing anytime, anywhere communications with customers, partners and employees.

 

In conclusion, cloud PBX services are poised to gain broad adoption in the SMB segment, as more cloud service providers add them to their SaaS portfolios, and SMBs widely recognize the impact that cloud PBX can have on their business and customer experience.

 

Cloud Services, Industry & Market Insights, SMB Cloud Insights, Trends

Five Top Trends for 2013 in the SMB Cloud

by Emily Kruger, Sr Manager, Market Research, Parallels

 

Parallels has just finished our 2013 SMB Cloud Insights™ research and have heard from over 6,000 small and medium businesses from 15 countries around the world about their use of cloud services. Here are five of the most interesting trends we are seeing in the SMB cloud market worldwide:

1. Cloud storage is a hot topic in IaaS for SMBs. The majority of small businesses are willing to pay 25% to 50% more for their VPS if it comes with extra storage.
 
2. When SMBs buy their web applications varies dramatically by SMB size. Over 40% of micro SMB (< 10 employees) bought their web apps with their web hosting and never returned to buy anything else. Medium SMBs (50 employees +) are much more likely to return to their web hoster for additional purchases.
 
3. Hosted business email took off this past year and was the fastest growing cloud service category in many countries. Perceived security of business class email and better integration with mobile devices are the leading reasons to switch from free to paid email accounts.
 
4. Hosted PBX is another cloud service that is growing quickly. Automated attendant and call control are the most popular features for SMBs – and ones not omit from a hosted PBX offering.
 
5. The most popular SaaS applications remain file sharing, instant collaboration and online backup & storage…but there is growing interest in support / help desk apps, online conferencing (phone and web) and online accounting.

Find out much more about the SMB cloud market in Parallels SMB Cloud Insights™ reports.  Look for the 2013 research for Europe and Asia-Pacific to be released this Fall at WHD.local events or download all the research at www.parallels.com/smbreport.

 

 

 

 

APS, Cloud Services, CloudBeat, Events

Enabling the New Cloud Distribution Model to Fuel Growth and Adoption

by Alex Danyluk, Senior Director, ISV & SaaS Alliances, Parallels

 

The march to the cloud is accelerating and undeniable. And every link in the IT distribution chain, from companies that develop software to customers, is adjusting to the new cloud distribution model. At the center of this new chain are various types of new and traditional distributors, from traditional hosting companies like HostWay and Hostnet, to managed service providers (MSPs) like Apptix and ApprRiver, to telecommunication companies like Sprint, Telenor and America Movil, to non-traditional service providers like Dell and Staples. 

 

While there is great diversity in the distribution, they all share some common challenges and needs. They all want to sell a rich basket of independent software vendor (ISV) goods that are well integrated with each other and are easy for distributors and their customers to manage. They also want to enhance customer and user interface (UI) experiences. These needs create a challenge for both the new distributors and ISVs that want to reach these new diverse distribution channels. Each ISV and distributor needs to integrate their systems one by one, integrating provisioning, billing, portals and inter-application interoperability. 

 

The cost and time to connect these ISVs with cloud distributors is a barrier to growth and adoption.  Several companies, including Parallels, recognized this problem a few years ago and helped create the APS standard (www.APSstandard.org) to build a replicable model for connecting ISVs to distributors. To date, more than 400 ISV applications are APS packaged, distributing their offers via hundreds of distributors around the globe.

 

Following the APS standard, an ISV can build a connector once to easily enable distribution through APS-enabled disruptors. APS integrations can automatically set up user accounts when a customer purchase is made and assists with billing information, as would be expected from such a standard. APS goes further to ensure the customers and distributors have an excellent experience. APS has the ability for two different services to exchange information so that services like Symantec anti-virus and Microsoft Hosted Exchange automatically knows how to work with each other when a customer purchase both.  ISVs can also embed rich customer HTML5 screens, further enhancing the user experience.

 

With APS, both ISVs and distributors now have a means of not only enabling the distribution of cloud services in the new cloud distribution model, but also enhancing the overall customer and service provider experience for advanced cross product integration capabilities and rich UI experiences.

 

On September 9, 2:30-3:30, in the Sequoia Room, at VentureBeat’s CloudBeat conference, I’ll be participating in a panel with Uday Keshavdas, Director of Business Development at Box and Joan Fazio Senior Director, Emerging Channels and Verticals, Commercial Marketing at Symantec, and we look forward to continuing the discussion there.

 

 

APS, Cloud Services, Parallels Automation

What’s New and Growing in APS

 

Continued growth of global Parallels Automation deployments is providing valuable insights into the cloud applications, and more specifically, the APS-enabled cloud applications that are gaining traction with service providers and with SMBs. Below are a few key trends:

 

  • Cloud portfolios differ greatly between service providers and are shaped by key variables including core services offered, market segment served, and the individual cloud strategy of the provider. The APS catalog is growing both in diversity of cloud categories supported, and diversity of ISVs supporting each category. This continued growth is helping service providers to really tailor their offering to address unique market demands, and to compete with other providers in the regions they serve.

 

  • Email is the common denominator for just about all service provider cloud portfolios. As would be expected, we see strong and consistent numbers for Microsoft Exchange and Office 365. Open-Xchange and Mail2World are gaining strong traction with providers offering a white-label, low-cost email services that can also be bundled with core–or other cloud–services. Email security and archiving services continue to be a popular and natural add-on for business-class email.

 

  • Microsoft Lync is gaining wide adoption with service providers in all global regions, and is delivering strong and consistent growth rates in both instances and end-user seats. Deployed in fall 2012, the Microsoft Lync APS package is a proving to be a winner for service providers who have the right channels and sales engagement models. Microsoft’s Lync 2013 Hosting Pack, released this past May, is further accelerating provider deployments.

 

  • Web presence continues to be an in-demand cloud category, particularly in maturing markets such as Latin America and Asia. For Parallels Automation partners self-hosting their web presence solution, success is supported by website builders and marketing tools such as Parallels Web Presence Builder. Growth in providers outsourcing their web presence solutions is supported by APS-enabled ISVs such as Hostopia and ePages.

 

  • Business applications are varied with strong global and region-specific growth. Vidyo, Deskera and Hightail (formally Yousendit) are just a few of the business application providers to join the APS community this past year. While many of these APS packages serve a global market, others, such as Moysklad, a Russian-language CRM application, target specific regions and are showing strong growth with that focus. Business applications are absolutely leading APS cloud category growth, even outperforming Parallels SMB Cloud Insights research expectations.

To dig deeper into these trends and understand how they apply to your market, contact your Parallels account lead to schedule a market review, or contact me directly at srowan@parallels.com.

 

Steph Rowan, Market Development, Parallels

srowan@parallels.com

 

 

Asia-Pacific SMB Cloud Insights™, Australia, Cloud Services, Industry & Market Insights

Flexibility and Agility Will Drive Cloud-Computing Adoption in Australia

By David Dzienciol, Vice President and GM, Parallels Asia Pacific

 

2013 will be a challenging year for Australian businesses on the back of a slow US economy and Europe still struggling to find its way from political and economic uncertainties. With Australian exports impacted by a strong local currency, businesses must double their efforts to look for ways to enhance business operations, including the use of cost-effective tools to raise revenue and lower operating cost.

 

It is these gloomy market conditions that will further accelerate adoption of cloud computing, including hosting services, as a proven solution to helping companies expand their market reach, drive deeper customer engagements, and drive costs down.

 

Parallels SMB Cloud Insights™ for Australia is driving home the imperative to “profit from the cloud.” Our report on the state of cloud computing adoption in Australia shows how the market there has evolved in the past year and highlights the most important opportunities for growth over the next few years.

 

Despite the continued progress in educating local businesses about the inherent benefits of cloud computing, Australian small and medium businesses (SMBs) continue to trail the rest of the developed world in their use of cloud services, despite the expanding array of services and applications that continue to be rolled out in response to the unique needs of local businesses.  

 

As of summer 2013, Parallels estimates the Australian SMB market at about $1.2B AUD. Demand for cloud-based business applications will outpace all other sectors growing at 63 percent to reach $430M AUD. The second biggest market, IaaS, will show the weakest growth at 16 percent albeit contributing $343M AUD. The other cloud-services sectors: web presence and web applications will contribute $275M AUD, while hosted communication and collaboration (consisting of hosted premium email and hosted PBX) will add $134M AUD. 

 

 

Australian cloud service-providers must continue to market the transformational business benefits of cloud computing but make it clear that benefits like increased efficiency and flexibility are more important and critical to the long-term prospects of SMBs as is the short-term ‘cost-out’ to be gained the use of cloud-based services.

 

Respondents to the survey are clearly maturing in their understanding of the technology as they recognize the benefits will far outweigh the growing pains they experience in migrating to the cloud. This strategic view of the cloud’s capability comes from a greater focus being placed on the business and operational process redesign and business model improvements as key enablers.

 

The survey also highlights the rising confidence in the security of cloud providers. As government and industry regulators mature in their understanding of the impact of cloud computing, SMBs can expect to see inevitable complexities around compliance. They are also approaching the tax structure of cloud deployments more strategically, rather than an afterthought to implementation with many finding that tax planning can make a significant difference in the company’s tax position, positively impacting the business case for cloud.

 

Many of today’s cloud-service providers were at one point SMBs themselves. This experience should serve them well reminding them about a winning characteristic of SMBs – agility. Those who are able to stay on top of SMBs’ changing cloud needs and reach these SMBs with the right mix of services and applications will grow and profit in the years to come.