Parallels Summit 2009 - A Big Success!

Parallels Summit 2009 was a big success this year and thanks to the Parallels team for putting on a great show! Attendees could clearly see why Parallels is becoming the industry leader in this space.

Serguei Beloussov, CEO of Parallels, provided the key note speech to about 1,000 attendees.

Serguei's presentation focused on the latest industry trends and he identified the channel falling into 5 different computing or cloud models.
1) Google Cloud, 2) Microsoft Cloud, 3) Other Platform Clouds (HP, IBM, Apple, EMC, Yahoo, Amazon, Facebook, Adobe and more), 4) Channel Clouds like Pointivity (mass market hosting, Telco, SaaS VARs, MSPs) and 5) In house clouds (large companies).

Serguei noted the keys to partner success are to become a one stop shop, differentiate your product offering and focus on customer and partner retention. Many VARs will not have the resources to support large product lines and it will be important for VARs without hosting expertise to partner with hosting providers who can support and train their staff both on the technology and on how to sell and position these products in the marketplace. Serguei noted there's a huge demand both from customers and within the IT industry for cloud and SaaS computing solutions.

The show included a great set of speakers most notably Morris Miller (founder of Rackspace) and Bill McNee (Saugatuck Technology). Morris focused on the importance of POSITIONING and provided a month by month/year by year historical overview of Rackspace's go-to-market strategies and product positioning strategies. Bill McNee provided in-depth research on the current SaaS industry and provided an end-user / CEO perspective of the hosting industry.

Over 160 companies utilize Parallels Automation and thanks to Parallels team for promoting Pointivity in your presentations!

Another big announcement was the release of Parallels SaaS module which now includes over 200 products that can be delivered through one interface. If you are a ISV or have a hosting solution product, please check out www.APSStandard.org. APS Standard has an open API directly to Parallels Automation engine, allowing any ISV product to be integrated with the Parallels engine. By leveraging this API you can get access to hundreds of master distributors and master resellers worldwide. If you need any help on getting your product integrated with Parallels, please feel free to contact partners@pointivity.com.

The two best additions to APS Standard and Parallels Automation at the show were Global Relay's message archiving and Open Exchange email replacement for Exchange Server. Both products are much needed in the SaaS and hosting industry and offer tremendous value to end-users and companies looking to outsource complex email services on a low cost, month to month, pay as you go option.