HOUSTON—Parallels, a hosting and cloud services enablement provider, announced support for a Microsoft Azure Pack for Hosting Providers and updates to a collection of cloud service delivery solutions for Microsoft partners.
Parallels announced the solution, developed in collaboration with Microsoft’s server and tools business group, at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) here. The solution is in addition to the new support of Microsoft Windows Azure Pack for Hosting. Parallels has also updated its support for the Microsoft Lync 2013 Hosting Pack, Microsoft Exchange 2013 and Microsoft Office 365. The new product and updated features help make Parallels, a Microsoft Global ISV and Gold Certified Partner, a key partner in enabling Microsoft cloud solutions via cloud distribution channels, Parallels officials said.
With the new product announced today, Parallels now helps bring the power of Microsoft’s Azure platform into a domain hosting provider’s data center for sales to service providers’ small and midsize business (SMB) customers. Service providers can now speed their time to market and deliver the latest innovations from Microsoft ahead of their competitors, Parallels said.
To help address SMBs’ growing need for cloud solutions, Parallels has been collaborating with Microsoft since 2007 to enable the delivery of cloud services for telecom companies, domain hosting providers, distributors, managed service providers and VARs. This has helped Parallels develop services with value-added support to assist its service provider partners in driving more revenue faster by offering essential solutions for specific SMB workloads.
“We are thrilled to expand our long-standing partnership with Parallels as they help us reach the broad and diverse cloud distribution channel and speed time to market for our valued partners,” said Jon Roskill, corporate vice president of the Worldwide Partner Group at Microsoft, in a statement. “Few companies understand the hosting and cloud needs of SMBs better than Parallels, and they continue to demonstrate it with how fast they accelerate deployments for new Microsoft hosting partners.”
Meanwhile, Parallels has shipped an upgrade to the latest Microsoft Office 365 release, enabling service providers to stay up to date with the latest Microsoft releases. Among the new features included is multilanguage support to help address differing regional needs. Parallels now supports more than one third of the Microsoft Office Hosted 365 partners around the globe.
Parallels also has shipped availability for Microsoft Hosting Pack for Lync. Made available to customers in May, solution providers can now add this market-changing technology to their overall cloud services portfolio easily and quickly. Parallels partners have more than tripled the number of hosted Microsoft Lync seats in the past year.
In addition, Parallels helps service providers stay current and competitive with Microsoft Exchange through multiple upgrades. Parallels partners continue to grow hosted Exchange at over 40 percent year-over-year, the company said. Parallels builds on its longstanding partnership with Microsoft Exchange by supporting more than 750,000 hosted email subscribers under management, with more than 75 hosting providers around the globe.
“We are excited to have Microsoft as a partner in the Parallels ecosystem and we see a big opportunity to provide their wide range of innovative collaborative and hosted solutions to our customers,” said John Zanni, vice president of Service Provider Marketing and Alliances at Parallels, in a statement. “With these combined solutions, no one else helps cloud hosting providers significantly speed time to market with the largest service providers in the market.”
Parallels also has been partnering with Microsoft to support the growing Application Packing Standard (APS) ecosystem that helps package and deliver services quickly. This includes solutions like email migration; hosted desktop services on Windows Server from Dell; white glove email migration services from Mural; automated email services from BitTitan; security and archiving services from Symantec, McAfee and SpamExperts; and Windows-based backup services from BackupAgent.
By being a part of the Parallels APS ecosystem, ISVs can help service providers launch services to market faster and with lower deployment costs and superior customer experiences. Parallels partners are selling upsell and cross-sell services of Microsoft core services at an average growth rate of over a 100 percent year-over-year.