Product Announcements

Parallels Plesk Panel 10.4 and partner training now available

Parallels announces General Availability of Plesk 10.4. Read all about Plesk 10.4 and try live hands-on demos. Learn about What's New in Plesk 10.4. And discover new changes in the Plesk Panel Power Pack (including Plesk Server Mobile Manager and free licenses from Kaspersky and Unity Mobile).

Get Training. On-demand webinar sessions to help your team understand the business value of this new release, technical issues related to upgrade and management, as well as sales strategies for upselling and monetizing key new features.

Get Plesk 10.4 and Upgrade. Download Parallels Plesk Panel 10.4 and access Plesk product documentation, knowledge base and forums.

Introducing PACI — Parallels Automation for Cloud Infrastructure

On Tuesday, November 9, 2011, the Parallels Service Provider engineering team completed a major milestone and delivered our first release of Parallels Automation for Cloud Infrastructure (PACI) and Parallels Operations Automation (POA) 5.3 required for PACI. PACI provides significant new capabilities for our Parallels Automation partners, allowing them to deliver and resell Cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) to small and medium sized businesses (SMBs). Read more

Parallels Automation for Cloud Marketplace launches

Parallels Automation for Cloud Marketplace (PACM) is an all-inclusive, fully turn-key SaaS solution, designed so you can launch a branded marketplace in a matter of days rather than weeks or months.

How can you go-to-market so quickly with PACM? By addressing a few common pain points, PACM turns an otherwise arduous journey into a swift, profitable endeavor, allowing you to focus on sales. Key benefits of PACM are:

Pre-negotiated business terms to avoid the time consuming hassle of negotiating with each application vendor
Automated instant user license key brokerage to make tracking and billing easy
Optional turn-key certified help desk support allows you to outsource support for applications to a certified support provider
Rapid deployment by Parallels Professional Services so you can be up and running in days
Marketing support including campaigns and best practices to help you drive sales

Parallels Business Automation Standard 4.1.5 now available for download

This latest release of Parallels Business Automation Standard (PBAS) will help service providers increase revenue and stay competitive by offering new hosting plans powered by the latest Parallels Plesk Panel 10.4 — which includes the new Web Presence Builder 10.4 — and new mobile monitoring tools.

Some of the new benefits of PBAS 4.1.5

Differentiate your offerings by providing new Shared and VPS hosting plans powered by the latest version of CentOS6 and Parallels Plesk 10.4
Upsell your customers with Parallels Plesk Power Pack and offer the new mobile application "Plesk Mobile Server Manager" which allows your customers to remotely monitor and control their VPS servers.
Increase sales of VPS plans bundled with Parallels Plesk 10.4 for Windows to web designers and developers via new support in Plesk 10.4 for Microsoft Webmatrix.
Simplify your offering by replacing old Parallels Plesk and Small Business Panel hosting plans with one simpler version: Parallels Plesk Panel 10.4, which combines the functionality of those two panels.
Your customers can create a blog in seconds and share their files and documents via the new Web Presence Builder — another reason to upgrade them to VPS.

Upgrade to PBAS 4.1.5 and check out the release notes if you need more information. You can provide feedback and suggestions, including product enhancement ideas in the new PBAS forum.

Not automated yet? Deploy PBAS and save money with our new Revenue Share Pricing option. It gets you up and running today, with no license fees until your business is growing comfortably.

Headlines

As promised — new Parallels SMB Cloud Insights™ reports now available for additional European countries

Parallels continues to extend our research into the small and medium businesses (SMB) cloud services market with the release of three new reports focusing on three more European markets — UK, France and Spain. This valuable research focuses on current usage, growth expectations and areas of market opportunity for service providers and how they can profit by delivering cloud services to their SMB customers. Parallels' research also offers unique insights into SMBs' cloud service buying trends and priorities for the next several years. The reports are available in English and the home country language for each report.

Latest Customer Survey — Parallels continues to drive improvements in Customer Support and Product Quality

In the latest Parallels Quarterly Customer Survey, service providers identified Customer Support and Product Quality as the areas where improvements could deliver greatest value. We have made progress on both fronts:

The Parallels Support team is close to achieving an average two-days for time-to-resolution. In addition, the Parallels Support team has made other improvements, including:
- Posting an updated support guide to make it easier for you to engage with Parallels Support.
- Added team members to our Support Account Management team for Parallels Automation customers.
- Continued our process improvements for better solution delivery.
The Parallels Automation and Server Virtualization teams have taken steps to improve the quality of products:
- At the time of new product releases, engineers sit with Customer Support for several weeks to learn firsthand about issues customers are experiencing.
- Improved and expanded beta testing processes. During the beta testing process for Parallels Server Bare Metal 5.0 (released in September 2011), the Server Virtualization team collected feedback from hundreds of customers and worked closely with partners to ensure the product was tested extensively in multiple operational settings.

Microsoft Asia Hosting Club 2011 in Taipei, Taiwan

Parallels sponsored the Microsoft Asia Hosting Club which was held from 2 to 4 November in Taipei, Taiwan. Now in its 5th year, this exclusive event promotes best practice sharing, collaboration and partnerships among cloud-focused decision makers within the hosting ecosystem.

This year's theme explored how service providers can monetize the consumerization phenomenon in Asia, with high-profile industry leaders and senior Microsoft executives leading the lively program sessions.

New leadership for Parallels in Europe & Northern Africa

Parallels has appointed Jesper Frederiksen as VP and General Manager for Europe & Northern Africa covering both our Services Provider and Desktop Virtualization business sectors. Jesper comes to Parallels from Symantec where he was VP EMEA for Symantec’s Cloud (SaaS) business unit. His background includes pan-European experience in senior leadership roles at Postini/Google, KVS and NetIQ. Jesper — who is from Denmark — resides in the UK and will be working closely with the Parallels team and partners across Europe and the Northern African region.

Parallels adds CTO and new CFO to support continued growth

CTO Michael Toutonghi will serve Parallels as its technical visionary and evangelist, driving alignment across the entire hosting and cloud automation product lines and guiding engineering efforts throughout the company. He will focus on strengthening Parallels Automation position as the platform of choice for hosting and cloud service providers, while identifying next-generation capabilities for customers and partners. Toutonghi is inventor or co-inventor of 19 issued patents and brings a deep technology background to Parallels. He is one of a select group of only 22 Technical Fellows at Microsoft Corporation.

CFO David Arkley joins Parallels’ leadership team with a seasoned background as an insightful financial expert and advisor. He will be a key contributor for shaping the company’s future direction as it continues its growth trajectory. He brings more than 20 years of experience in financial services and strategy, most recently in a senior financial role with Itron, Inc., the leading provider of energy and water resource management solutions for nearly 8,000 utilities in 130 countries around the world.

Events

Parallels APS and Cloud Services Webinar Series for Service Providers — December 13th, 8:00am (PST)

Register today for this monthly partner webinar. Cloud services providers should attend this webinar to hear directly from application and service vendors on the features and benefits of their applications and how vendors can help service providers profit by offering applications to small business customers. This is a great opportunity to find out how to sell high demand commercial applications and services and to learn how Parallels and the vendors can help you be successful in increasing ARPU and reducing customer churn. This webinar series features a wide range of proven and revenue generating application categories.

You can also watch past webinars.

Boost your Parallels Partner Storefront sales — sign up for a private Marketing Clinic session at Parallels Summit 2012

Have you turned on your Parallels Partner Storefront in Parallels Plesk Panel? Are you wondering how you can get more out of your marketing dollars?

We are announcing special marketing clinics at Parallels Summit 2012 designed to help you get a better understanding of your marketing activities and goals. The clinics will be led by a team of Parallels Marketing experts and outside consultants.

What topics are covered? Whether you need a web site audit or drill-down on a marketing topic, our in-house and agency subject matter experts will meet with you for a15-30 minute private session. The session will be tailored to your specific needs. Popular topics include:

Branding, Online Marketing, email marketing, Search Engine Marketing, Website Optimization, Social Media, Customer Retention, Web Analytics, Affiliate Marketing, Partner Marketing

You’ll get answers to burning questions, learn best practices tailored to your specific needs and marketing goals, learn how to compete with larger and well-funded competitors and more. Slots are limited and offered on a first-come first-served basis to Summit registrants. If you are already registered for Summit 2012, you can sign up for an appointment today — if you aren’t yet registered for Summit 2012 you can signup during the registration process.

Internet Alliance Summit 2011 in Petaling Jaya, Malaysia

Parallels will be participating in The Internet Alliance Summit 2011 which will be held on 30 November at One World Hotel in Petaling Jaya, Malaysia.

The summit is targeting about 300 service providers/ISVs/resellers and will focus on cloud technology, strategy and challenges. This event aims to help delegates get a full overview of what cloud solutions are available today depending on whether they want to build their own cloud, buy an out-of-the-box cloud platform or subscribe to a cloud hosting package as well as value added services such as DDOS mitigation and content caching.

Parallels Summit 2012 Agenda updated

Check out the latest updates to the Summit agenda. In addition to more session listings you can also now read descriptions for each session. You can register for Summit for no fee by using registration code P12N4P at checkout.

News from the Parallels Support Team

The Frontline Support team for Parallels Automation has increased coverage and now provides support 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
The most recent product roadmaps are now published on Parallels PartnerNet to help you plan your upgrade and migration strategy. You must be a Parallels Partner to access PartnerNet. If you are a Partner but don’t yet use PartnerNet — register for free access today.
Parallels Product Expert Faris Raouf wrote a Plesk Panel customer testimonial for the Parallels Cloud Service Provider blog.

Tips and Tricks from Parallels Global Support

To learn about how your CPU limits work in Parallels Server Bare Metal and Parallels Virtuozzo Containers see the following Knowledge Base article:
“CPU limits design in Parallels Server 5 Bare Metal and Parallels Virtuozzo Containers for Linux”
This Knowledge Base article covers the limitations when creating application templates on Parallels Virtuozzo Containers for Windows:
“Application template limitations in Parallels Containers for Windows”
Follow Parallels Global Support on Twitter for all the latest news from the Global Support team including new Knowledge Base articles, Troubleshooting Assistance, build updates and more http://www.twitter.com/ParallelsCares

Training & Certification opportunities announced for Parallels Summit 2012 — limited availability — sign up now

November 2011