Parallels says SMB market is driving business for hosting and cloud service providers

Roy Illsley, Peter Hall & Mile Sapien, Principal Analysts, Ovum IT

At the recent Parallels Summit 2013 in Las Vegas, more than 1,300 attendees heard how the SMB market is driving new business for service providers and hosting companies alike. With headquarters in Seattle, Parallels is a private company that does not disclose its revenues. It has 900 employees worldwide and two-thirds of its business is focused on software solutions (including automation) that enable service providers to rapidly bring to market cloud-based services for the SMB market.

The remaining third of its business is a Mac consumer desktop virtualization business where it holds over 80% of US market share. At the event, Parallels made three new solutions announcements, the most significant of which was a cloud storage solution.

The SMB market is driving growth for the channel and attracting new major service providers

Parallels estimates the total global SMB IT …

AWS Unveils OpsWorks Cloud DevOps Solution

Amazon AWS just announced DevOps (beta) a no-charge solution for managing applications in the AWS cloud using Chef recipes, built on technology developed by Peritor, the creators of Scalarium, which was acquired by AWS in 2012:

AWS OpsWorks is a DevOps solution for managing applications of any scale or complexity on the AWS cloud. AWS OpsWorks features an integrated experience for managing the complete application lifecycle, including resource provisioning, configuration management, application deployment, software updates, monitoring, and access control. 

AWS OpsWorks lets you model and visualize your application with layers that define how to configure a set of resources that are managed together. You can also define the software configuration for each layer, including installation scripts and initialization tasks. When an instance is added to a layer, all the configuration steps are applied for you. AWS OpsWorks promotes conventions but is flexible enough to let you customize any aspect of your environment. Since AWS OpsWorks uses Chef recipes, you can leverage hundreds of community-built configurations such as PostgreSQL, Nginx, and Solr.

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Fpweb.net Named “Bronze Sponsor” of Cloud Expo New York

SYS-CON Events announced today that Fpweb.net, a leading provider of managed, private hosting solutions for Microsoft SharePoint, has been named “Bronze Sponsor” of SYS-CON’s 12th International Cloud Expo, which will take place on June 10–13, 2013, at the Javits Center in New York City, New York.
Since SharePoint’s inception, Fpweb.net, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, has been a leading SharePoint hosting provider, including being the very first to host the Microsoft® platform in 1999. Fpweb.net’s SharePoint Cloud success is grounded in the unmatched level of experience, dedication and unrivaled expertise that is trusted by customers in over 80 countries.

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Why Cloud Computing Skills Will Be Required for IT Workers

The cloud is changing not only how businesses access applications and provide services to their customers, it’s changing the way they view their own employees, according to a recent report.
With the impact of cloud computing on data access and the availability of cloud storage, job descriptions are also undergoing change as businesses move to the cloud. This change is transforming IT departments as well as the company as a whole. IT workers are now expected to search for cost-effective cloud computing applications, according to an article on CloudTimes.org.
With cloud computing, CIOs can now focus on creating business strategies rather than devote their time to fixing IT problems. There is now a growing demand for cloud strategy consultants, cloud architects and cloud service planners. According to a report released by the Center for Economics and Business Research and EMC, the growing demand for cloud computing services will generate at least 446,000 jobs yearly until 2015.

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Life in a Startup: Getting Above the Noise

Today at AppZero, we are fortunate enough to have been selected as one of the 25 Hot Cloud Startups by Startup 50, published by Jeff Vance. The list was published on February 9, 2013 as a prelude to his upcoming story “10 Hot Cloud Startups to Watch” for CIO.
One of the biggest challenges in a startup is that there are so many things you have to do. In the very beginning, the company must progress from idea to product. Then the original product idea for some reason does not make grade (not compelling enough, too competitive a market, etc.) and the company has to pivot from the original premise.
The other foundational ingredient needed to create a great company is the team. The team is critical — they test, scrutinize and kick around the original idea, which more often than not, pivots or morphs into a better one. Only a tight-knit team can distill the benefits and core value lurking underneath the surface of an immature prototype while dealing with time pressures. Running out of cash, proving the viability of the product, acquiring customers and closing financing are just a few of the time pressures that can tear a team apart.

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Cloud Expo New York Speaker Profile: Jill T. Singer – NRO

With Cloud Expo New York | 12th Cloud Expo [June 10-13, 2013] hurtling towards us, let’s start to take a look at the distinguished individuals in our incredible Speaker Faculty for the technical and strategy sessions at the conference coming up June 10-13 at the Jacob Javits Center in New York City.

We have technical and strategy sessions for you all four days dealing with every nook and cranny of Cloud Computing and Big Data, but what of those who are presenting? Who are they, where do they work, what else have they written and/or said about the Cloud that is transforming the world of Enterprise IT, side by side with the exploding use of enterprise Big Data – processed in the Cloud – to drive value for businesses…?

We have technical and strategy sessions for you every day from June 11 through June 14 dealing with every nook and cranny of Cloud Computing and Big Data, but what of those who are presenting? Who are they, where do they work, what else have they written and/or said about the Cloud that is transforming the world of Enterprise IT, side by side with the exploding use of enterprise Big Data – processed in the Cloud – to drive value for businesses…?

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McAfee Named “Gold Sponsor” of Cloud Expo New York

SYS-CON Events announced today that McAfee, a wholly owned subsidiary of Intel Corporation, has been named “Gold Sponsor” of SYS-CON’s 12th International Cloud Expo, which will take place on June 10–13, 2013, at the Javits Center in New York City, New York.
McAfee, a wholly owned subsidiary of Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC), empowers businesses, the public sector, and home users to safely experience the benefits of the Internet. The company delivers proactive and proven security solutions and services for systems, networks, and mobile devices around the world. With its Security Connected strategy, innovative approach to hardware-enhanced security, and unique Global Threat Intelligence network, McAfee is relentlessly focused on keeping its customers safe.

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Cloud Expo New York Speaker Profile: Greg O’Connor – AppZero

With Cloud Expo New York | 12th Cloud Expo [June 10-13, 2013] hurtling towards us, let’s start to take a look at the distinguished individuals in our incredible Speaker Faculty for the technical and strategy sessions at the conference coming up June 10-13 at the Jacob Javits Center in New York City.

We have technical and strategy sessions for you all four days dealing with every nook and cranny of Cloud Computing and Big Data, but what of those who are presenting? Who are they, where do they work, what else have they written and/or said about the Cloud that is transforming the world of Enterprise IT, side by side with the exploding use of enterprise Big Data – processed in the Cloud – to drive value for businesses…?

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AWS Launches OpsWorks

Amazon Web Services has launched AWS OpsWorks to help developers manage the complete application lifecycle.
The move recognizes that more and more applications are running in the cloud and that developers have been using third-party tools – perhaps at the expense of flexibility, control or custom tooling – at least that’s Amazon’s story – to manage resource provisioning, configuration management, deployment, monitoring and access control.
OpsWorks is supposed to automate things end-to-end so developers can orchestrate the tasks required to model, deploy, scale and maintain their applications.
It’s said to support a variety of application architectures and any software with a scripted installation.

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