If you’re in the market to run Windows® on your Mac®, you should consider the award-winning #1 solution for virtualization: Parallels Desktop for Mac. We’ve answered the who, what, when, and why customers have chosen Parallels Desktop as the #1 virtualization option to run Windows on Mac since 2006. The data below comes to you directly […]
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At the recent Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Parallels announced that Parallels Remote Application Server (RAS) supports Microsoft Azure. This blog post will show you this new support and what it now enables end users to do in Parallels RAS. A future post will discuss in some detail how IT admins configure Parallels RAS (and […]
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Why Cross-Platform Will Be Even Bigger in 2016 2016 promises to be a year that continues in the same vein as 2015: the IT industry will continue to boom, digital media will continue to grow in importance, and the world will continue to be more digitalized and more mobile. The digital, mobile culture that people […]
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Guest blog by Eugenio Ferrante, Head of Marketing Operations, APAC Choosing between “upgrade” and “the better option.” They may have been warned about the impending end-of-life (EOL) of Citrix XenApp—versions 4.5 and 5 will only be supported till end of 2015; version 6, in the next three years—but for many IT administrators, four months may […]
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An overwhelming majority of enterprise decision makers want cloud services, but practically all of them are blocked from adopting it, according to new figures released by Hitachi Data System (HDS).
HDS recently announced the results of a study the IT growth issues in UK enterprises. In the research it surveyed 200 UK IT decision makers at companies with over 1000 employees in a bid to discover the issues that cause “innovation inertia”.
HDS reported that a large majority (81%) of IT leaders say their companies aren’t set up for the digital age. It also established two other pieces of evidence for a growing clamour for cloud services, with 75% of IT leaders complaining that they can’t make informed investment decisions and 90% of the study group confession that their organisation is at risk of being outpaced by digitally-born brands.
However, HDS has released statistics to BusinessCloudNews that reveal that even more of the study group are prevented from applying cloud solutions to these problems, with 86% of respondents saying they experience barriers to cloud adoption. The main blockages, according to Hitachi, are security concerns (reported by 50% of the study group), data protection concerns (39%), budget constraints (28%) and legacy technology restrictions (20%).
“It’s not surprising that IT leaders feel concerned,” said Bob Plumridge, EMEA CTO at HDS, “the digital evolution feels scary because they are having to throw out every theory and intuition they have.”
In response HDS has a launched additions to its flash portfolio in order to improve the performance of cloud infrastructure and remove any performance doubts from nervous cloud buyers. The new offerings include an all-flash Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform (VSP) F Series, enhanced models of the Hitachi VSP G series offerings, next-generation Hitachi flash modules with inline data compression (FMD DC2) and enhanced Hitachi Automation Director and Data Centre Analytics tools for improved response times and greater effective capacity.
New features include customizable OS X images with task sequencing deployments, Mac discovery and auto enrollment plus much more, saving IT departments’ time and resources as they manage Macs and PCs through one pane of glass. Today, we released a new version of Parallels Mac Management! Say hello to Parallels Mac Management 4.0 for Microsoft® System […]
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With technology enabling professionals to work from anywhere, IT outsourcing has become a business need, therefore a business opportunity. It appears to be an added expense at first glance, but businesses ultimately save money by outsourcing, as Managed Service Providers (MSPs) provide similar services to multiple customers, which lowers the cost. By delegating server deployment, […]
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By Eran Farajun, Executive Vice President, Asigra
If you make software purchasing decisions or influence your company’s data and recovery solutions, there are some recent studies you should know about.
The Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) recently surveyed economic buyers, technical buyers, and financial buyers about their data-growth expectations, cost pressures, pricing preferences, and recovery rates. They discovered:
With these data points in mind, let’s now look at another report by Forrester Research: Demand Pricing That Matches Business Value—The Radical Sourcing Trend for 2013. In this report, Duncan Jones explains why the traditional pricing models currently dominating the software market are “obsolete” and “no longer match products’ cost to the business value they deliver.”
Jones notes that technology market shifts such as cloud and big data affect the way that IT managers and other purchasers buy software. He goes on to recommend that software buyers demand new pricing models that better match business value.
Performance-based pricing models continue to surface in the IT industry, such as recovery-based pricing for backup and recovery users: Recovery-based pricing can be categorized as a performance- or behaviorally driven pricing model that puts greater cost controls in the hands of the user. That’s because this approach has been decoupled from the number of machines protected or the capacity of data to protect. Instead, pricing is connected with the volume of data actually recovered.
Recovery-based pricing allows users to pay for what they are purchasing the solution to do – recover their data. It also helps software purchasers rationalize their IT budget for data and recovery because they will be billed for data that is recovered. This model aligns with a recovery metric, no longer solely based on the backup of data. If a company’s recovery needs are less, then users will pay less for these services. What’s more, it offers a fixed cost of backup with a variable cost for recovery based on the amount of data recovered on an annual basis.
Eran Farajun is the executive vice president for Asigra. The company can be reached at partners@asigra.com or 416-736-8111.
by, Gerrit-Jan van Wieren, Vice President Business Development
As an IT service provider you probably started years ago with the idea you would do a better job than the rest. With a lot of enthusiasm and energy you have built a company of reasonable size and offer all kinds of different services. With the rise of Cloud you have the ideal position to tell your customers not to buy and own things, or have IT staff as a core business. You ask them the question; is this bringing you money? Or can we take it off your back? You used to invest in hardware which looked cheaper long-term, but you end up with IT staff that you don’t want on your payroll.
Did you ask that question to yourself? As an IT service provider providing services is in your DNA. But is investing also in your DNA? Or is it about making money? Owning stuff is not your core business. When you choose a solution, whether it is hosted backup or hosted e-mail the question should always be if you could do a better job. Look at all the aspects which come with hosting it yourself. It might look cheaper; buy some disks, forget to calculate the costs for staff, electricity and bring in the money.
Is it that easy? There is some risk involved. Disks can break, 24×7 availability is actually costing money and your staff can (accidentally) mismanage the platform into serious downtime. When we take a closer look at the business case we also see the calculation is missing reality. You always start with 0 GB and it takes time to reach the 100% coverage for all invested Terabytes. And when you reach 80% you know you’re up for new cash out.
Will you do a better job than the manufacturer? Will it bring you more money?
Always go for pay as you grow, without investments. Add value to the proposition with your knowledge and well educated staff. Start making money from day one. And remember what you tell your end customer about investing in IT. Practice what you preach.
Cloud computing is affecting the role of IT professionals who typically manage a business’s technological infrastructure, and depending on who you ask the cloud is either an exciting new development or a serious challenge to job security.
In Parallels SMB Cloud Insights Report, we explore how cloud services have enabled companies large and small to make massive budget cuts and gain efficiency by forgoing expensive equipment and annually-licensed software. “Parallels SMB Cloud Insights research continues to confirm that SMBs are at the forefront of cloud adoption,” says Birger Steen, CEO of Parallels. “This research is part of our commitment to service providers to give them both the expertise and technology they need to address the quickly-growing market for SMB cloud services.”
The rise in cloud services marks a shift in IT responsibilities and Parallels is leading that charge by offering targeted services to for hosters to deliver to SMBs that are either converting to the cloud, switching to the cloud, or expanding the cloud services they already have in place.
In addition to serving SMBs with dedicated IT professionals on staff, Parallels research also identifies the cloud delivery opportunities to serve SMBs with no IT staff as well as SMBs that hire outside IT consultants.
Parallels research shows that 45% of SMBs in the U.S. have no IT staff, leaving “do-it-yourself” owners or senior members of the company to handle purchasing decisions, installation, and maintenance of all IT solutions. For the SMBs that hire outside IT consultants (which 18% of micro SMBs do), Parallels allows the consultants (usually hosting resellers) to offer cloud services to the SMB end customer without having to manage the infrastructure themselves. In both cases, cloud services benefit business and the bottom line.
With cloud services in place, IT professionals can focus on what they are often highly undervalued for in business: strategy and innovation. A successful career in IT may mean having a cloud-focused skillset and being able to think strategically on a big-picture level.
In the move toward IT as a service, IT professionals will be measured less by how many fires they put out on any given day and more by the value and efficiency they add to internal and client-facing business processes. “Instead of managing infrastructure, tending the help desk, and commissioning server instances to be created,” Brandon Butler of Network World writes, “IT workers of tomorrow are more likely to be managing vendor relationships, working across departments and helping clients and workers integrate into the cloud.”
Learn more about this transition in any of our Parallels SMB Cloud Insights Reports, and stay tuned for a 5-part blog series exploring areas such as hosted infrastructure, web presence, hosted communication and collaboration, business applications, and more.