Hosting, Parallels, Parallels Partners, Partnerships, service provider

Parallels Expands Partner Program Benefits to Smaller and Growing Web Hosters and Website Designers Seeking to Expand Their Businesses

Parallels today announced expanded access of its Partner Program specifically for smaller and growing web hosters and website designers. Parallels’ unmatched depth of valuable expertise, best practices, tools and other go-to-market resources are now available to hosters seeking to grow their businesses by delivering cloud services.

“Smaller and growing web hosters and design firms now have access to the best resources available for accelerating their revenue and profitability,” said John Zanni, Vice President, Service Provider Marketing and Alliances, Parallels. “Key benefits of our program include expertise on how to implement proven strategies and tactics for improving customer value through better operations and for delivering a broader set of hosted services and applications.”

New access for Parallels Partners includes:

  • A new Member level, specifically designed for small web hosters who
    are seeking business growth and who aspire to achieve advanced partner
    benefits as their revenue and customer base expands.
  • The introduction of the Bronze Partner program level for Europe and
    North Africa (EUNA).The Bronze Partner program is designed for high
    impact web hosters who typically operate on a local or regional level,
    and who can benefit from tools and resources to help them grow their
    businesses to the next level. Membership in the Bronze Partner Program
    has proved popular with similar-sized hosters in North America, with
    membership tripling over the past year.

All members of the Parallels Partner Program can take advantage of recent enhancements and resources centrally located on the Parallels PartnerNet portal, including:

  • SMB Knowledge Headquarters – tools, whitepapers, research and webinars
    help service providers gain insights on SMB cloud usage and cloud
    services opportunities. Based on its interactions with thousands of
    service providers, and its ongoing series of SMB Cloud Insights™
    research, Parallels is the single best source for information on
    trends and actionable recommendations for targeting, marketing and
    selling cloud services to SMBs.
  • Best Practices – assets, case studies, templates and other
    go-to-market resources provide proven strategies and tactics for
    service plans, pricing, offerings, promotions, bundling and upselling
    cloud services.
  • Parallels Partner Forums –partners can interact with Parallels and
    other service providers to overcome challenges and better realize
    market opportunities. Partners can benefit from sharing and learning
    best practices and techniques to become more proficient in their
    sales, marketing and support activities.

For more information about signing up for the Parallels Service Provider Partner Program, visit http://www.parallels.com/spp/partnerprogram


Customer Relationship Management, Life sciences, Pharmaceutical industry, Veeva, Veeva CRM

Veeva Claims Rising Number of Small- to Mid-Sized Pharmaceutical Companies Switching to Cloud CRM

In less than three months, more than a dozen small- to mid-sized (SMB) life sciences companies in the U.S. have selected multitenant, cloud-based Veeva CRM while more than 75 SMB life sciences companies have chosen Veeva CRM in the last five years. The numbers show a steady rise in organizations outside ‘Pharma’s Top 50’ turning to the cloud for enterprise solutions. Ironwood Pharmaceuticals, Dyax Biopharma, Valeritas and Questcor Pharmaceuticals are among the many SMB life sciences companies to recently go live with Veeva CRM. These and many other SMB companies cite affordable enterprise-class performance as the primary driver for cloud system adoption.

Historically, enterprise-class CRM systems have proven cost-prohibitive for most SMB life sciences companies. These companies, however, have found an alternative solution where they can access enterprise-class software and hardware at a much lower cost structure. The traditional client/server CRM applications are typically over the budget – especially when ongoing maintenance and upgrade costs are factored in.

“Compared with other vendors, Veeva CRM seems to be the most logical – meaning it’s easy for users to figure out and fairly obvious how to do something new or different,” said Hokan Ojert, vice president of sales for Valeritas. “Even the analytics aspect of Veeva CRM is painless – what used to take multiple steps in and out of different applications with our previous system is now aggregated neatly within Veeva and accessible in a click or two. This streamlined technology approach allows us to focus on what we are supposed to be doing…supporting our physicians.”

Built on an inherently flexible, multi-tenant cloud-based platform, Veeva CRM offers life sciences companies a significantly more affordable per-seat pricing model while still providing access to the same world-class hardware and software leveraged by Top 20 Pharma. The cloud enables growing SMB life sciences organizations to quickly and efficiently scale up or down to meet demand. Changes can be made in minutes using simple point and click configuration without vendor intervention or the resulting expense. And, system functionality can be easily extended through free integrations with outside applications and data sources. All of these benefits are possible as a result of multitenant cloud-based technology from Veeva.

“With Veeva CRM, we can make configuration changes, modify fields, add users or change territories anytime without ever calling Veeva or waiting for vendor support,” said Heather Beaudoin, Questcor’s Director, Commercial Analytics and Sales Operations. “In fact, we can manage the entire system with just one-half of a full-time employee versus 5, 7 or even 10 FTEs if you have a complicated on-premise system. Veeva’s technology leads to vendor independence, and it’s proving a big advantage for us.”

According to Veeva’s Vice President of Sales, John Dawley, “Many smaller pharmaceutical companies that together make up a large portion of the fabric of our industry are seeing the incredible value of an industry specific, cloud-based solution. They need a fast, nimble, cost-effective solution and Veeva is there to help them achieve their goals.”


Cloud Decision Framework Tool, IDC, International Data Corporation, Research

IDC Debuts Cloud Decision Framework Tool at the Cloud Leadership Forum

English: Diagram showing overview of cloud com...

Worldwide public IT cloud services spending is forecast to surpass $55 billion in 2014. Yet IT leaders continue to struggle with quantifying the operational, organizational, and financial implications of their application hosting and platform decisions. To help IT decision makers to better understand their options and the associated implications as they move various enterprise workloads to the cloud, International Data Corporation (IDC) has developed a new Cloud Decision Framework Tool.

A robust tool for any IT organization wishing to more precisely evaluate its cloud computing strategy, IDC’s Cloud Decision Framework Tool officially debuted during a comprehensive, three-hour IDC analyst workshop that took place in conjunction with the IDC/IDG Cloud Leadership Forum in Santa Clara, California.

“This tool was carefully designed to help guide IT managers in their decisions around on-premise, private and public cloud computing options,” said Joe Pucciarelli, vice president, Technology Financial & Executive Strategies at IDC. “The painstaking evaluation struggles that once plagued the cloud decision-making process have been all but eliminated as the Cloud Decision Framework Tool does all the heavy lifting.”

IDC’s Cloud Decision Framework Tool Helps IT Managers:

  • Become more agile in the cloud decision making process
  • Understand and take advantage of the profound technology, platform,
    staffing, and economic opportunities that will shape IT strategies in
    the coming years
  • Identify customer priorities for IT cloud system management software
    investments
  • Align business/IT governance around a specific cloud vision
  • Restructure IT purchasing and sourcing approaches
  • Evaluate overall cloud goals

“The Cloud Decision Framework Tool allows you to decompose a very complex business decision by breaking it down into its key components. A CIO can use the tool to collaborate with the rest of the executive team and get them on board with moving to a cloud,” commented Allyn McGillicaddy, Principal, Office of the CIO.com.

Click here to access IDC’s Cloud Decision Framework Tool. For more information, please contact Joe Pucciarelli at jpucciarelli@idc.com or Randy Perry at rperry@idc.com.


Uncategorized

Dell enterprise cloud to hit Europe by end of August

The specifics of Dell’s major cloud expansion have been revealed, with their infrastructure as a service (IaaS) enterprise cloud to arrive in Europe by August 31.

The platform is currently undergoing a trial in the US and Canada, with Dell Cloud aligning to VMWare’s vCloud Datacenter Service for the platform.

As reported by CloudTech last year, the service will help provide hosted infrastructure and data platforms, alongside managing and securing data, and will be available in both public and hybrid cloud systems.

Dell claims that their public cloud will be completely secure, citing the active monitoring from SecureWorks, data encryption services from TrendMicro and “multiple layers” of security in Dell centres.

The Texas-based company is adding their considerable weight to the IaaS platform after many big companies are trying to influence the expansion.

Oracle was the latest company to announce a public cloud offering just last week.

Ricky …

Uncategorized

Are Your Software Licenses Cloud-Friendly?

Any software licensing scheme that counts the number of processors, servers, or virtual instances is fundamentally Cloud-unfriendly. In the pre-Cloud days, servers were expensive and difficult to install and configure, so we operated in the context of scarcity: add a server, pay a lot of money. The Cloud changes this equation to one of abundance: instances are cheap, plentiful, and easy to configure, so nothing we put on a particular instance should cost us very much or have much importance in and of itself.
ZapThink likes nothing better than to poke a stick at a hornets’ nest, and our last ZapFlash did not disappoint. We discussed how private Clouds weakened the enterprise value proposition for Cloud Computing, eliciting consternation far and wide, not from enterprises implementing such Clouds, but from consultants and vendors in the business of building and outfitting them. To which we say: well, duh! Cloud Computing is a paradigm shift precisely because we won’t need to hire pricey consultants or buy a lot of gear to use them!

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SoftLayer Announces Turnkey Private Clouds

SoftLayer, a provider of global, Internet-scale cloud infrastructure, has unveiled its new SoftLayer Private Clouds solution that provisions and configures full private cloud deployments on demand. These scalable, secure and high-performance deployments leverage the company’s automated architecture, worldwide data center locations and private network, and customer-controlled infrastructure management system.
“For some time our customers have used our portfolio of dedicated servers, network resources, and virtualization options to build their own private clouds. Now, with SoftLayer Private Clouds, instead of starting at square one, you begin with a pre-configured cloud ready for whatever you want to do with it,” said Duke Skarda, Chief Technology Officer for SoftLayer. “We’ve built our Private Clouds solution out of our experience creating and managing our own cloud, and our unique capabilities in automating sophisticated deployments. At the push of a button you have a dedicated cloud at your command, with full access and control over every aspect, and the ability to scale infinitely, on demand.”

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Amazon Web Services Expands Free Support and Lowers Prices on Premium Tiers

Amazon Web Services LLC (AWS), an Amazon.com Company (NASDAQ: AMZN), on Thursday announced expanded free support for all AWS customers, reduced pricing on premium support plans and multiple new features to help customers better interact with and improve their use of AWS, including chat functionality and proactive alerts when opportunities exist to save money, improve system performance, or close security gaps. AWS Support is a fast-response support channel that is staffed around the clock with experienced and technical support engineers. For more information on the pricing and the new options, visit http://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/.
As part of Thursday’s announcement of the new support features, the broad selection of support offerings offered by AWS have been renamed to better align with the customer’s need or use case. All plans include support for an unlimited number of cases, are available worldwide, have no long term contracts, and can be cancelled at any time.

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appzero Announces Cloud Migration Partner Program for Cloud Providers and SIs

appzero has announced a cloud migration partner program designed specifically for Cloud providers and the System Integrators (SI) who have practices specializing in moving enterprise applications to those clouds. With its recently released zapp migration capability at the core of the program, appzero slashes the time, labor, and costs associated with migrating production applications to any cloud.
Patent-pending zapp migration automates on-boarding of complex server-side applications to any cloud destination, with no changes to the application. SIs in the program receive training and product on which to build and accelerate cloud migration practices. Cloud providers in this program have access to skilled SIs to move customer applications to the cloud. Enterprise customers find a cost-effective channel for cloud migration.

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Porticor Joins VMware Technology Alliance Partner Program

Porticor, a cloud data security company delivering a cloud-based data encryption solution that infuses trust into the cloud and keeps cloud data confidential by ensuring customer keys are kept private, today announced that it has joined the VMware Technology Alliance Partner (TAP) program. Members of the TAP program collaborate with VMware to deliver innovative solutions for virtualization and cloud computing. The diversity and depth of the TAP ecosystem provides customers with the flexibility to choose a partner with the right expertise to satisfy their unique needs.

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CloudTest, iOS, iPad, iPhone, Mobile, Mobile operating system, SOASTA, Tools

SOASTA Releases CloudTest Mobile Test Automation Platform for iOS

SOASTA today released CloudTest Mobile, to deliver complete performance and functional test automation of mobile apps across distributed mobile devices. The CloudTest Mobile platform provides precise capture and playback of all continuous touch gestures including pan, pinch, zoom and scroll on iPhones, iPads, and iPods. See the CloudTest Mobile demonstration here.

Today, mobile developers can easily automate the testing of their mobile apps on iOS 6. CloudTest’s unique approach of residing inside the app allows developers to precisely test their apps when new mobile operating systems are released.

“Starting today, developers are working on iOS 6 versions of their Apps and automated functional testing is a real problem for these developers,” stated Tal Broda, VP, Engineering, at SOASTA. “Today, CloudTest provides full support for capture and playback of any App running on iOS 6 including any gesture or any UI element.”

SOASTA also announced today support for Appcelerator Titanium 2.0 platform, which gives Appcelerator’s 300,000 mobile developers seamless access to CloudTest Mobile’s test automation capabilities. See release here.

“The explosion of web and mobile applications along with the proliferation of mobile devices, makes manual testing obsolete. With today’s rapid development cycles, time to market requirements and technology changes, developers require a new set of automation solutions to support multi-touch gestures and 3D gaming,” comments Tom Lounibos, CEO SOASTA. “Now, with CloudTest Mobile, developers can quickly develop, test and deliver their mobile applications with the quality their users expect. Our support for Titanium 2.0 will make this especially seamless for Appcelerator’s mobile developer community.”

CloudTest Mobile delivers affordable, accurate, and complete mobile app testing using real mobile devices. Traditional testing solutions have employed device emulators and optical recognition approaches that are not precise or reliable enough to test this generation of mobile apps. CloudTest Mobile captures the start and end points of each gesture, the journey between, and the speed with which the gesture is performed. It uniquely conducts testing from within the mobile app, replacing brittle optical recognition approaches and enabling validations based on variable values and internal app state changes. Distributed mobile devices are accessed over the air, eliminating the need for tethering or “jail breaking” and allowing mobile devices – anywhere – to be used in a test.

CloudTest Mobile is available today. Download your free version of CloudTest Lite here. SOASTA will be hosting a webinar titled, “Are Your Mobile Apps Rock Star Ready?” on Tuesday, June 19 at 10:00am PST. For more information or to register, please click here.


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