This post is part of the Parallels Partner Series, featuring the insights of service providers who are growing by leveraging Parallels software, expertise and ecosystem to meet the cloud computing needs of Small and Medium Businesses (SMBs). View other posts here.
In 2010, LuxCloud saw the opportunity to create a platform to help IT resellers market cloud-based applications on a white-label basis. We knew two things would make this concept compelling to resellers: very low start-up costs – as a result of zero infrastructure investment – and the ability to sell services under one’s own brand. And this was how LuxCloud was born.
We were very clear from the beginning that we wanted to offer a platform which allowed resellers to focus on launching new services and thus growing their business. Addressing issues of incorporating automated business functions (like billing) was important to us, as was the ability to quickly and easily automate the provisioning of services. In addition, the platform needed to be able to scale as quickly as our reseller partners were able to grow their own businesses.
We found our solution in Parallels Automation, which provides a complete and customizable operational and business support system for delivering SaaS. Every aspect of the solution – from service delivery through management and billing – is automated. This enables us and our resellers to rapidly deploy new services while minimizing operational costs and maximizing revenues and profitability.
The scalability aspect of Parallels Automation is another draw. As resellers get comfortable with the business model, they can add new services quickly and easily. They can potentially scale up from a few hundred users to even a million from the same platform and without investing in any infrastructure.
After receiving training from Parallels, we set up an on-boarding process for our resellers, which enable us to get them up and running within a few days. For the reseller, this faster time-to-market means better return-on-investment.
Within weeks of our launch, we won ten reseller partners across Western Europe, earning very positive feedback for our new delivery platform. What also makes LuxCloud popular among resellers is the ease of use and speed of integration and deployment. And because we take care of all service maintenance and management using Parallels Automation, resellers can focus on their core business – selling and delivering cloud services to their customers.
We are making plans to expand our business and services offerings using the Parallels Automation platform to include Microsoft Windows-based shared hosting and other Microsoft hosted applications. We are also planning to expand the business globally, adding additional services and applications according to market needs and demands.
We are using our ‘first-mover advantage’ based on Parallels Automation to create a market niche. While other service providers may recognize the opportunity, our deep understanding of the motivations of resellers, our long-standing relationships with the stakeholders in our ecosystem, and the proven success of our white-label distribution platform, puts us in a leadership position in a burgeoning cloud services distribution market.
Marco Houwen
CEO and Founder
LuxCloud