TOWARD AN OPEN HOSTING ECOSYSTEM

Open Fusion is a long-term initiative launched by Parallels to address software integration issues in the web hosting industry and to enable new sources of revenue for both hosting providers and 3^rd party application vendors. The goal of Open Fusion is to create an open software platform and ecosystem around it to:

• Enable hosting providers to customize, extend and integrate Parallels hosting automation products and 3rd-party software components into their hosting environments.
• Provide components necessary to automate all business and operational aspect of the hosting business.

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As a part of the Open Fusion Initiative, Parallels will gradually move all its products to the common platform with the following features:

• Open API – All products will expose their functional and management interfaces as standard-based XML web services with language bindings for most popular languages.
• Application Packaging Standard (APS) – Provides a unified format for packaging web site applications in hosting environments from both Parallels and 3^rd party application vendors.
• Single Sign-On Engine – Provides single sign-on capabilities to all participating components. The benefits of using AE include single sign-on, cross-product sessions and integration with external directories and billing systems.
• Licensing Engine – Provides common facility for issuing, accounting and reporting on the products keys and licenses.
• UI Integration and Customization – provides facility for passing important UI information between applications, such as locale and visual theme.

In addition, Parallels will support the Open Fusion Initiative in the following areas:

• SDK and documentation – Parallels provides complete SDK (Software Development Kit) that consists of reference documentation for all APIs, additional development tools and complete set of guidelines and code samples.
• APS Certification – Ensures the implementation of the open application packaging standard by hosting service providers and application vendors is done according to the specification.
• Community – SWDN provides technical information and on-line forums for users and third-party vendors of hosting automation products.

Open Fusion Roadmap

Open Fusion will be delivered in phases aligned with Parallels product releases.

• Open Fusion Phase 0 - shipping now. Improved integration between Virtuozzo, Plesk, Expand and Parallels Business Automation.
• Open Fusion Phase 1 - 2007. Virtuozzo, Plesk, Expand, Sitebuilder and Parallels Business Automation move to a common platform that includes Authentication Engine, Licensing Engine, Web services APIs, Unified UI.
• Open Fusion Phase 2 - 2008. Open Fusion platform is extended to include Service Provisioning/Update Engine, Task/Workflow Engine and Migration Engine.

Open Fusion Partner Program

If you want to enroll in the Open Fusion Partner Program or want more information about the Open Fusion initiative, please send your requests to Open Fusion team.