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(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- Representatives of virtualization and automation software developer Parallels (www.parallels.com) are currently on a seven-country roadtrip, explaining to partners and potential clients the company’s vision for best practices in deploying applications and services in a hosted environment.
The EMEA Partner Roadshow stopped in Amsterdam Thursday, giving Parallels the opportunity to introduce its new hosted control panel software, Parallels Panel 10 SMB Edition, to the Dutch market. Still in beta, the hosted control panel helps hosting and cloud services providers broaden their offerings, increase revenue and meet the IT needs of small and medium-sized businesses.
Soeren von Varchmin, who heads Parallels' software as a service initiative, said Panel 10 SMB Edition was the result of a dialogue between the company and its products' users. Von Varchmin says that, in creating SMB Edition, Parallels looked at the services and determined "what needs to be added, what is currently not in Plesk, but also more importantly, what needs to be simplified."
What resulted was a control panel that brings necessary software to web hosts, helping both ISVs and hosts become more profitable.
Parallels Panel 10 SMB Edition features the new Parallels Partner Marketplace, which lets hosts quickly enter the growing software-as-a-service market by providing SMBs access to the most popular applications through the control panel including a number of IT and business applications, such as e-commerce, customer relationship management, human resources, accounting, video conferencing, web content management, and email. Some of the applications now available include Interspire's email marketing and Pinnacle Cart's e-Commerce shopping cart. Parallels plans to get the world's largest software providers on-board later this year.
The EMEA Partner stop in Amsterdam was expected to be one of the most well attended events, providing the perfect venue for companies to make their European presence known, along with their interest in the market.
The roadshow has given Domain and web hosting services provider Tucows (www.tucows.com) and its wholesale reseller services group OpenSRS (www.opensrs.com) an opportunity to showcase the work it has done in building a European team.
"OpenSRS has had a presence in Europe for over six years now and we are looking to speak to our resellers throughout Europe," EMEA business development manager Ben Reuss said. "I'm meeting with current clients and prospective clients who want to find out more about our services and how they can learn to grow their web hosting businesses together [with OpenSRS]."
While OpenSRS is re-affirming its place in the European hosting industry, others are taking the event as an opportunity to better acquaint themselves with the European market. Unison (www.unison.com), a relatively new unified communications provider, was able to showcase its solution to the hosting market at the EMEA Partner Roadshow and learn about the European market's needs.
"We know the American market pretty well -- that's where we're headquartered, that's where our roots are," Unison director of business development Irina Zavina said. "We're learning more about European markets. It's a large market, but it's a small market because it's very localized so the Dutch market is different from Poland, is different from Switzerland, is different from Helsinki because... attitude toward open source and Microsoft and the way people spend money is very different. So we're trying to learn about each particular market and understand how markets are organized and our products are distributed.
"We also don't have a big presence in Europe yet, despite offices in London and St. Petersburg, so we're trying to figure out how we're going to go at the market as well as understand the different product requirements in addition to language."
Parallels has more than 200 partners in Western Europe, including 90 percent of the top EMEA hosts. Parallels' white label reseller programs are particularly popular in Europe, letting local hosts resell Parallels products and offer a wider array of applications without losing their unique brand independence and client loyalty.
The 2009 Parallels Partner roadshow started in Stockholm, Sept. 1 and moved onto Amsterdam, Sept. 3. It will be visiting Warsaw, Sept. 7; Cologne, Sept. 10; Paris, Sept. 14; Madrid, Sept. 17; and London, Sept. 21. Those wishing to register for the events can do so on Parallels' EMEA 2009 website.
Read Back Issues of WHIR Magazine
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This has been, for us, one of the most interesting, exciting and challenging build-ups to an issue of the magazine yet, Web Hosting's All Star Team. The balloting process was our first experiment with a kind of user participation we're planning to do a lot more with in the months to come. We had thousands of ballots submitted, with hundreds of write-in suggestions and a demonstration of user engagement that has us feeling super positive about the project.
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July 2009 - What am I Worth?
One of the interesting luxuries of working on a project like the printed WHIR magazine is that it allows us to play with things like our point of view from one issue to the next. In recent months we've been giving added attention to the kind of practical and applicable advice aimed at smaller hosts and resellers. This issue carries on with that point of view, asking, in our cover story, "what am I worth?" It's a complicated question without a clear-cut answer.
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May 2009 - The Blueprint for a Small Web Host
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