Cloud Services, Events, Microsoft, Parallels Automation, WPC

Best of Class clouds use Microsoft and Parallels because that is what customers want.

 

Did you know that there are over 400 services that can be sold through Parallels Service delivery platform? These are all based on the APS standard. It is important to have such a broad portfolio as the cloud needs of SMBs are quite diverse. At the same time, there are a core set of services that customers expect. They include Web Hosting, Email, Collaboration and Infrastructure. In most cases the preferred choice of customers are Microsoft products. This is why Parallels has always made sure that Parallels software and Microsoft software work well together and that we always have the latest and greatest versions available.

 

We make this happen by spending time with Microsoft engineers in the product groups and Microsoft sales and marketing in the field. It assures us that we are building solutions that are optimized for service providers and bring out the best of Microsoft products and services.

 

This has enabled above market growth rates from our service provider partners for Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft Office 365, and Microsoft Lync.

 

This week we have updates for all of these products as well as a few more including Microsoft Lync Hosting Pack and soon, Microsoft Azure Pack for Hosting Providers.

 

If you want to offer Microsoft-based cloud services and offer them soon, let me know.

 

Thank you Microsoft for being a great partner.

 

John Zanni, Vice President SP Marketing and Alliances

 

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Cloud Services Help SHI Redefine the Buyer-Seller Dynamic

SHI International has teamed with Ariba to streamline IT product discovery and purchasing processes for large agricultural machinery builder AGCO.
A global provider of IT products, procurement, and related services, with more than $4 billion in annual sales, SHI has tapped into the networked economy to improve their business productivity and sales. To learn more about how agile procurement works well, we’re joined John D’Aquila, Applications Support Manager at SHI International Corp. in Somerset, New Jersey.

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IBM Closes on SoftLayer, Nails First Joint Account

IBM said Monday that it had closed its estimated ~$2 billion acquisition of public cloud infrastructure house SoftLayer Technologies, which is supposed to help Big Blue compete against IaaS market leader Amazon Web Services.
The eight-year-old company has been paired with IBM’s private SmartCloud unit to create a new Cloud Services Division reporting to GM Jim Comfort to pursue a share of what IDC figures could be a $105 billion market by 2016.
Before the acquisition IBM had an internal goal of reaching $7 billion in cloud revenue by the end of 2015, a bogie that reportedly remains unchanged. IBM’s cloud revenues were up a reported 80% last year.
SoftLayer brings IBM 13 data centers worldwide and 21,000 customers, largely SMBs. The new IBM division where SoftLayer now lives will be chasing both IBM and SoftLayer clients, ISVs, and channel and technology partners.

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EMC Buys ID Manager Aveksa

EMC said Monday that it had bought privately held identity verification specialist Aveksa for its RSA authentication unit. The Times of India, where the Massachusetts-based Aveksa does core development work, broke the story and claimed that EMC paid upwards of $225 million in cash for the place. The start-up was reportedly afraid that if it didn’t sell EMC or another big company would develop Aveksa-like capabilities.

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EMC Buys ID Manager Aveksa

EMC said Monday that it had bought privately held identity verification specialist Aveksa for its RSA authentication unit. The Times of India, where the Massachusetts-based Aveksa does core development work, broke the story and claimed that EMC paid upwards of $225 million in cash for the place. The start-up was reportedly afraid that if it didn’t sell EMC or another big company would develop Aveksa-like capabilities.

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SOA Software Announces API Management for DataPower

SOA Software on Monday announced API Management for the IBM WebSphere DataPower family of SOA appliances. “APIs present a challenge to IT organizations today,” said Alistair Farquharson, CTO of SOA Software. “SOA Software’s unique approach to API management on DataPower allows IT organizations to keep pace with technology advances presented by next generation mobile and web applications while benefiting from the same rich enterprise support we already offer customers today.”
The new solution manages the full lifecycle of DataPower-based APIs and extends the capabilities of the widely deployed SOA Software Integrated Governance Solution for IBM DataPower.
This unified approach to managing both APIs and services extends the capabilities of DataPower infrastructure, enabling mobile and web solutions for internal mainframe and WebSphere MQ based services. SOA Software’s API Gateway, Lifecycle Manager for APIs and Community Manager have been integrated with DataPower, providing our customers a seamless API Management solution.

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What’s hot in CRM 2013: Strong interest in mobile for sales and service

Gartner published the report What’s Hot in CRM Applications in 2013, by Ed Thompson on June 20, 2013.  The report covers areas of interest by clients in the four areas of marketing, sales, customer service and e-commerce.

The report states that “the 2013 What’s Hot list was compiled after examining Gartner inquiry volumes by topic. It was then supplemented by asking all Gartner CRM analysts to offer their opinions on what has been generating the most interest during all the client inquiries they have taken since the end of 2012 and in the beginning of 2013.”

Big data, cloud, social, mobile and the Internet of Things are the five catalysts that are driving inquiries in the hottest areas of interest. 

Gartner’s Ed Thompson, author of the report, states that “this is where our clients’ interests lie, although not their current CRM spending.”  Technologies highlighted in red are …

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Is the Cloud the Right Solution for Your App?

It is surprising to see how every new technology suddenly becomes the thing that will solve every problem. The cloud is no different. Everybody rushes to migrate their applications to the cloud because they think this will magically make them faster, cheaper, agile, competitive and… add any other buzzword that comes to mind. Well, not so fast! You don’t need to move every single application to the cloud! Or at lest not in its current state.
There are thousands of articles on Internet that discuss what applications are applicable for the cloud (including several that I have written) and what are not. There are also thousands of articles discussing the different cloud technologies and how they can be used. Unfortunately what I have seen in the last four years is that people don’t pay attention to those writings and choose applications that are not applicable for the cloud or severely misuse the technology.

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Is the Cloud the Right Solution for Your App?

It is surprising to see how every new technology suddenly becomes the thing that will solve every problem. The cloud is no different. Everybody rushes to migrate their applications to the cloud because they think this will magically make them faster, cheaper, agile, competitive and… add any other buzzword that comes to mind. Well, not so fast! You don’t need to move every single application to the cloud! Or at lest not in its current state.
There are thousands of articles on Internet that discuss what applications are applicable for the cloud (including several that I have written) and what are not. There are also thousands of articles discussing the different cloud technologies and how they can be used. Unfortunately what I have seen in the last four years is that people don’t pay attention to those writings and choose applications that are not applicable for the cloud or severely misuse the technology.

read more

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Microsoft report shows channel partner success in selling cloud

Microsoft has had a lot to say in terms of cloud computing developments in recent months, and this latest report in association with IDC may come as no surprise: channel partners who have more than 50% of revenue in cloud are experiencing major payoffs in business growth.

The report surfaced at the company’s Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC13) in Houston, and found that cloud partners perform better in various KPIs; revenue per employee, higher gross profit, higher customer acquisition, and of course faster growth.

But how many partners are there? The stats from the opening day’s play at WPC13, as The VAR Guy reports, were impressive.

3.2m businesses currently use Office 365; 150,000 partners worldwide are able to sell Office 365 and Microsoft cloud services. Over the past 12 months, 22,000 partners did sell Microsoft public cloud services – certainly impressive figures. But what other trends did …