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SWsoft Courts New Clients with BuysBy Justin Lee, theWHIR.com
September 27, 2007 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- In the past couple of weeks, SWsoft (swsoft.com) has gained considerable attention with three separate, key product acquisitions, strengthening its position in automation tools and increasing its market share beyond the 130,000 servers and 600,000 desktops it serves worldwide.
The server automation and virtualization provider bought Ensim's (ensim.com) automation business, Comodo's (comodo.com) Positive Software automation division and Sphera's (sphera.com) software as a service business.
The respective products will be added alongside SWsoft's other lines of automation and virtualization solutions, which include its server control panel Plesk, operating system virtualization solution Virtuozzo, Web design application Sitebuilder, automation solution PEM and desktop virtualization product Parallels.
However, SWsoft CEO Serguei Beloussov makes it clear that the acquisitions have more to do with expanding its existing customer base than attaining the technology itself.
"We weren't necessarily interested in the technology, but in each case we were interested in the channel customer base," says Beloussov.
Both the Ensim Pro and H-Sphere product acquisitions will help SWsoft tap into a customer base predominately comprised of Web hosts, while the Sphera acquisition provides access to a large customer base of telecommunication providers.
"We want to create a much broader channel in terms of hosters, and a much broader customer base in terms of end user customers, for our initiatives such as Application Packaging Standard and Open Fusion," says Beloussov. "This channel and this user base will be more attractive to independent software vendors who will package applications [for service providers] to be offered through that channel to that customer base. "
The Positive Software acquisition gives SWsoft the H-sphere control panel software and its two million end users. The company will also resell Comodo's security products, which include SSL certificates, with its automation solutions.
The Sphera buy will add that company's line of automation, provisioning, virtualization and management software offerings to SWsoft's portfolio, and enable the company to broaden its customer base to include more Web hosting companies, telecoms and enterprises.
Ensim Pro, SWsoft intends to make work with its other automation and virtualization products through the Open Fusion platform. In doing so, SWsoft will be able to provide Ensim Pro customers with greater resources and support than in the past.
Despite its efforts to accommodate the existing customers of its new products, SWsoft intends to continue aggressively developing Plesk along with its other products, which may include endorsing those products to the new customers, or incorporating ideas from the newly acquired technology.
"It's important to know that over the next several years we will diligently ensure that there is not a single feature in Ensim Pro that is not present in Plesk, and we'll also provide very convenient migration tools and migration services," says Beloussov. "We will encourage the customer base to migrate to Plesk but we definitely will not enforce it."
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