Latest News

Best Practices in Cloud Services: Steps to a Successful Go-to-Market Execution

Starting this month, our newsletter will include a new article series that addresses the most critical steps in successful go-to-market (GTM) execution. A well thought-out GTM plan is critical not only for ensuring a successful launch, but also for providing a validation reference for post-launch analysis and serving as a guide for future product launches. In this first article of the series, we look at the GTM planning process.

So, why should you invest time and resources into planning your GTM strategy? There are three key reasons:

1. Group alignment at the onset. Having the right people involved in GTM planning not only brings in a variety of viewpoints—possibly raising critical decision points that may otherwise go unconsidered—but also aligns internal groups to your overall strategy and execution plan, reducing later conflicts. At a minimum, you’ll want to include sales, support, finance, and technology in the planning process. Larger organizations may also want to involve legal, training, operations, and research teams for parts or all of the planning.

2. Early consideration of end-to-end customer experience. A good plan should anticipate and address customers’ needs at every step—from the time customers first hear about a product, through their consideration period, purchase process, product activation, support experience, and potential renewal or cancellation down the road. Because the customer journey involves many teams, the GTM planning experience is essential for ensuring that all needs are considered and addressed early on. We’ll dive deeper into the customer journey in future articles.

3. Multi–step discovery before locking in on a strategy. The ultimate benefit of a thorough planning process is consideration of a wide range of information before decisions are put in motion. Locking in on a strategy too early can limit your options down the road–and a changing strategy can delay your launch and increase costs. Some key points to cover during the planning process include business drivers, competitors, your value proposition, services to be offered, channel prioritization and forecasts, onboarding customers, and support strategies. By taking the time to consider all of these points before locking in on a strategy, you’ll have a much smoother launch. In future posts, we’ll dive into these decision points in greater detail.

Log in to Parallels PartnerNet for additional information and insights, and keep your eye out for future articles about best practices in cloud services.

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Parallels Propels WHD.australia into the Cloud

WorldHostingDays (WHD) is the world's largest series of hosting events, with over 4,200 attendees globally. At the inaugural WHD.australia event, held in Sydney, Australia on October 9, 2012, over 120 delegates attended presentations from industry experts, saw the latest solutions at the hosting fair, and networked with fellow hosting community members.

As one of three Diamond sponsors, Parallels delivered a presentation on “The Trillion-Dollar Battle for the Plugged-in SMB: What You Need to Know to Profit and Grow from the Cloud.” Parallels also had a booth in the exhibitor area. Both the presentation and the display highlighted the recent release of Parallels Plesk Panel 11, the most widely used hosting control panel. Parallels Plesk Panel 11 is now the fastest growing product in the company’s history, due to its powerful new features, ease of use, improved server performance, and enhanced security.

Parallels also conducted the ultimate cloud experience, where one lucky delegate had a chance to be literally propelled into the cloud—either by learning to fly a helicopter, by taking a hot air balloon ride, or by skydiving.

WHD.australia will return to Sydney in summer of 2013, and the Parallels Australia team looks forward to again being a part of this important hosting event.

Product Updates

Get Ready for Parallels Business Automation Standard 4.3 – Coming November 15

Parallels Business Automation Standard (PBAS) is one of the most proven billing and hosting automation solutions on the market for small and medium web-hosting businesses—and it’s about to get even better. PBAS 4.3, to be released on November 15, features a full range of new hosting services, powered by natively integrated Parallels Cloud Server, Parallels Plesk Automation, Parallels Plesk Panel, and Parallels Web Presence Builder.

PBAS 3.x and 4.0 will reach end of life this December, so now is the perfect time to update your PBAS version. Download the PBAS 4.2.2 update today and get ready for PBAS 4.3.

You can also join our November "What's new in Parallels Business Automation Standard 4.3" webinar to learn more about new hosting services you can launch. The webinar will provide an update on the new features, including:

• Integration with Parallels Plesk Automation
• Centralized email/antivirus/antispam solution
• Centralized database solution
• Support for the latest version of Parallels Cloud Server – version 6
• Support for MySQL 5.x

Our guest speakers, Craig Bartholomew, Vice President of Panel Products and Andrew Andriatis, Chief Software Architect of Parallels Plesk Automation, will be presenting the new features and technologies in Parallels Plesk Automation, including new shared hosting services with centralized email.

In addition, Jacquie Milam, Global Sales and Account Manager from Jelastic, will explain how hosting companies such as Layershift and Planeetta Internet, who are both PBAS customers, have created an additional revenue stream by integrating their hosting infrastructure with Jelastic Java cloud platform.

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Parallels Premium Outbound Antispam Now Available for Parallels Plesk Panel

Outbound spam can be a major problem for web hosters, resulting in blacklisting, damage to your reputation, and increased operational and support costs. And most existing solutions, such as throttling and pointing inbound solutions outbound, bring their own problems.

Now, with Parallels Premium Outbound Antispam solution, you can stop spam, phishing, and malware attacks at the source, saving money while also enhancing your customers’ satisfaction. To resell Parallels Premium Outbound Antispam through Parallels Plesk Panel, log in to Parallels Key Administrator. For additional information, log in to Parallels PartnerNet and view the "Parallels Plesk Panel and Add-ons Messaging" document.

Parallels Premium Outbound Antispam is also now available for service providers who have purchased Parallels Plesk Panel from us but have yet to become part of the Parallels Partner Program. Visit the Parallels Online Store and just click "Buy Online".

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Parallels releases New White Paper: Moving Virtual Storage to the Cloud

Most service providers today provision their servers with direct attached storage (DAS). While DAS is fast and inexpensive to procure, it is has a high overall cost of ownership – plus high failure rates that can significantly affect service availability. The local nature of DAS also limits elasticity and scalability, making it inappropriate for dynamic, highly fluid environments, such as those found in the cloud.

The ideal virtual storage solution for hosters offering cloud services is one that provides the speed advantages of locally attached storage but adds the ability to migrate, scale, and snapshot the storage. In addition, its cost per terabyte must be similar to that of local storage, and it should provide object copy redundancy for higher data reliability.

Parallels has just released Moving Virtual Storage to the Cloud, a white paper that provides guidance to hosters who are thinking of moving from traditional storage to cloud storage to enhance their cloud offerings. By explaining how to evaluate the various features offered by the large range of storage providers in the market today, this white paper will help you choose the system that’s best for you.

Case Studies

ServInt's PaaS Offering, Based on Parallels Virtuozzo Containers and Jelastic, Takes Off Like a Rocket

ServInt, a pioneering provider of managed hosting services for businesses, created a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) offering using Parallels Virtuozzo Containers and Jelastic's Java server hosting platform. The resulting cloud-based Java environment lets developers and IT administrators easily run their Java applications in the cloud, with no recoding.

Read the full case study.

Australia’s Second–Largest DSL Internet Service Provider Reduces Time-to-Market with Parallels Automation

iiNet was looking to maintain its core differentiation in customer service, even with the rapid growth that the business was experiencing. Parallels Automation provided iiNet with a single platform that enabled it to ensure consistency in customer support, while also allowing it to deploy new services quickly and cost–effectively in a competitive, price-driven market.

Read the full case study.

Nephos Networks Brings Cloud Services to South American Businesses with the Support of Parallels Automation

Nephos Networks uses Parallels Automation to manage a wide range of business tasks that would otherwise be time–consuming, manual processes. Across service provisioning, account control, billing, and reseller management, Parallels Automation forms the backbone of the Nephos Networks service.

Read the full case study.

Service Provider ReadySpace Boosts Award-Winning Singapore Businesswoman in Growing Her Online Presence

Singapore entrepreneur Nanz Chong–Komo needed a web hosting system that was scalable and easy to manage, allowing her to maintain her websites without requiring technical expertise. ReadySpace's elastic cloud server, powered by Parallels Automation for Cloud Infrastructure, gave her the necessary scalability, allowing resources to be rapidly provisioned as needed. And the solution’s value-added offerings, Parallels Plesk Panel and Parallels Web Presence Builder, provided the tools her team needed to easily manage a wide range of web–related tasks.

Read the full case study.

Parallels Automation Enables Australian Web Technology Services Company to Seize the VAR Opportunity

To compete effectively and grow its presence in the global technology services market, UberGlobal had to be able to roll out new services quickly, reduce its operating costs, and demonstrate that it could create value for its customers. UberGlobal chose Parallels Automation because of the broad product range, compatibility with the company’s existing hosting technology, and N–tier reseller capability.

Read the full case study.

View all Parallels hosting and cloud stories.

Partner Resources

Parallels Launches New and Improved PartnerNet

We’ve just relaunched our Parallels Service Provider PartnerNet portal, featuring:

• A new look and feel, with an enhanced menu navigation system and tag cloud to make it easier for you to find the content you’re looking for.
• White papers providing best practices and guidance on topics such as customer needs, product strategy, bundling, and technical operations.
• Go–to–market tools, including email templates, webinars, and worksheets.
• The SMB Knowledge Headquarters page, where you can find all the SMB Cloud Insights™ research papers available for download, as well as an interactive SMB data tool.
• Direct product downloads – with no lead forms to fill out.
• An editable company profile that populates the public-facing Parallels Partner Locator.
  (NOTE: this feature is available only for Bronze–level and above partners.

If you have not registered, please visit the Parallels PartnerNet registration page.

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New Subscriptions Offered via Service Provider Subscription Center

To help you better tailor the types of communications you wish to receive from Parallels, we've refreshed the Service Provider Subscription Center. Subscription product categories have been updated and security and technical product updates are separated from more general product news and information.

News from Support

Ticket Submission Form Update

To help decrease support ticket resolution times, we’ve removed the "Never call, email only" option from the Ticket Submission Form. We've also added a new option: “Call during business hours only.”

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Tips and Tricks from Parallels Global Support

• We’ve created a new “hub” article to provide Parallels Plesk Panel administrators with some possible solutions for the “500 - Internal Server Error” message. See [HUB] 500 - Internal Server Error.

• A new article explains how to change the Parallels Plesk Panel setting that limits the number of daily auto-replies that each mailbox can send. See How to limit autoresponder replies.