Q&A: Ravi Pimplaskar, Parallels

• By theWHIR.com , October 14, 2008

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Q&A: Ravi Pimplaskar, ParallelsIn an email interview with the WHIR, Ravi Pimplaskar, product marketing manager at Parallels, discusses the company's upcoming 2009 partner summit, which will take place this coming February in Las Vegas.

By Liam Eagle, theWHIR.com

October 14, 2008 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- Last week, Parallels announced some of the details surrounding its 2009 Parallels Partner Summit.

The event will take place from Monday, February 2 through Wednesday, February 4 at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino in Las Vegas.

In an announcement issued Thursday, Parallels said early registration for the summit is now open, which will address the over-arching subject of "cloud computing," along with sessions on software as a service, virtualized hosting and the future of automation.

According to the company, the event will include live demonstrations of current and upcoming Parallels releases, access to key players in the hosting industry and opportunities to establish new business relationships.

Parallels expects more than 1,000 attendees at this year's summit, an information page for which is posted online right here.

A photo from 2008's Parallels Partner Summit, where the WHIR was a sponsor.

In an email interview with the WHIR, Parallels product marketing manager Ravi Pimplaskar discussed some of the plans for the event, and its growing importance to the web hosting industry at large.

You've moved the Parallels Partner Summit for 2009 to Las Vegas. Is there a lot to that decision beyond the fact that Las Vegas is a pretty accommodating place for an event?

Ravi Pimplaskar: Our feedback survey from last year's Summit included a question asking for a preferred location for the 2009 event and gave the choices as Las Vegas, New York, Seattle, Orlando, and Washington, DC. Las Vegas was the overwhelming choice outnumbering the 2nd place city by a 2-1 margin. We selected the cities proposed as options believing that any would have been a great choice in terms of hosting an event.  At the end, since the selection was so one-sided, we decided to have the even where our attendees wanted to be.

Your partner conference keeps growing, in terms of its size, and in terms of its relative influence in the hosting business. As far as communities of users within the hosting business go, how significant would you say the Parallels partner community is, either in terms of size, or influence?

The last "partner only" conference we held was our 2006 event - since then, we've expanded the event beyond our partners, and next year will certainly be no exception. Although our partners still attend in high numbers, we have welcomed several new groups to our events - such as independent software vendors, hardware vendors, leading technology companies, and so forth. This year, we have expanded our agenda to also include our ever-growing number of enterprise customers. Our partner community includes some of the most influential players in all of the groups listed above - as such, you will find them not only in attendance at the Parallels Summit 2009, but also playing prominent roles in terms of sponsorship and speaking sessions. And you will find that is true in other technology-centered events throughout the year as well.

Do you think some of your initiatives like your developer network and open platform project make the opportunity for Parallels users to meet and interact with each other a really significant part of the event?

The most significant part of the event is the networking aspect. For example, last year we wanted to bring service providers and ISVs together to begin providing software as a service solutions. We don't view the purchasers of our software just as customers or users - but also as strategic partners. We want to help them foster other relationships that will enable them to grow within their market. Face-to-face interaction and networking with the associates we work so closely with each day is always valuable; however, with such an open, partnership-oriented platform, the opportunity to meet and interact is even more significant than usual.

It seems like some of the people I've spoken to who want to communicate to hosting providers consider the Parallels conference an important event to be at. Does that depart at all from what you originally set out to do with the event?

Not at all - the goal from the very beginning was to be a prominent event for the industry. We will always strive to provide a fun and informative networking event that will allow customers, partners and developers to interact and learn about the fast-paced and cutting edge IT industry. Our summit is an opportunity to put different types of businesses together - and the interaction and networking between them is what makes our event invaluable for all parties.

Can you give me a bit of a breakdown of what some of the key objectives for the event are, in terms of what you hope to communicate to customers and what you hope to get back from them?

The key objectives of the event are to provide the opportunity for people to gain analytical insight, learn how to evolve their business, foster relationships that strengthen the market, provide information on our upcoming initiatives, and, of course, have some fun.

In terms of subject areas, this year's focus will be on cloud computing, with sessions on SaaS, automation, virtualization, and related topics. We also will have key business leaders and industry experts providing strategic insight on how to survive against the corporate giants that are threatening our partners' and customers' market share.

Each year we also provide the opportunity for our customers to provide feedback on how we can improve the event, our company, and our products. We are always interested to hear back from our customers and this conference is the perfect opportunity for that. Much of what we've done over the last several months, actually, was born out of the Parallels Summit 2008.

And we expect to build on this with the Parallels Summit 2009 in Las Vegas, NV on February 2-4, 2009!

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