I spent perhaps too much time puzzling over how to best combine the words "diversify" and "virtualization" in crafting this post, when the result of that work amounts to maybe a halfhearted (and mostly beside-the-point) chuckle.
Divirtualsify. Divirtualizify. Divirtualizationification.
You see what I mean.
SWsoft issued an announcement about its successes in 2006 this week, and, being as one of those successes was "MacWorld Readers' Choice Award and the first non-Apple product to win - Parallels Desktop," the company decided it was the right time to publicly discuss its control of the software company Parallels.
This may have been fairly well known already. I'm not sure. But it certainly wasn't officially widely known, as is now the case.
Parallels produces desktop virtualization software that, while compatible with Linux and Windows, is most popular among MacOS users (hence the MacWorld award). The company doesn't dabble in server virtualization just yet, though something is apparently in the works. The Parallels Desktop for Mac software (the award winner) enables Mac users to run Windows on their Apple machines.
SWsoft acquired the company about three years ago, an interesting diversification of SWsoft's bread-and-butter business, but the company has been operating pretty independent of SWsoft's other businesses since then.
This week, SWsoft CEO Serguei Beloussov and Parallels CEO Nick Dobrovolskiy sent a letter to employees explaining the choice to reveal the relationship, saying that the companies would remain separate and maintain their own identities. But we may begin to see the companies working together.
The letter discussed the breadth of solutions offered by the two companies in combination:
"The combination of SWsoft and Parallels means that we are the only company in the world to provide a complete suite of virtualization and automation software that includes operating system virtualization (Virtuozzo), desktop virtual machine technology (Parallels) and our range of automation solutions across all major computing platforms including Windows, Linux, MacOS and beyond."
And it mentioned some plans for future products:
"SWsoft and Parallels will be announcing more products that will enhance the choices available to IT professionals, developers and consumers. These will include a server edition of Parallels, as well as tools for managing multiple virtualization technologies - whether from SWsoft, Parallels or other vendors - with one user interface."
Tags: swsoft, parallels, virtualization
I remember asking Serguei a couple of years ago why he's focusing so much Virtuozzo when Plesk has a much larger installed base. Clearly he had much more foresight than me!
However, as we can see, he and they expect there to be synergies between the two. And that certainly ought to be interesting.
I think the definition of "service providers" is changing too, along with SWSoft's business. For instance, Microsoft's Home Server could allow people to access a lot of home-hosted content through the web. Meanwhile, a friend just forwarded me a Lifehacker post (now on Digg) about some guy who keeps his iTunes library on Amazon.
People now put many more types of data online - not just websites. And they have many more ways and places to host stuff. The only increasingly certain thing is, the platforms they're using will be virtualizable. (What a goofy sounding non-word!)