Parallels president of marketing and alliances Jack Zubarev
(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — The first keynote on Thursday morning at the Parallels Summit was delivered by Jack Zubarev, whose session promised a look at the Parallels product roadmap.
He began by offering a bit of an analogy, looking at the technology of electricity, and pointing to the fact that it took 124 years from its invention to the time the last direct current device was turned off (in 2007). The time, he attributes to the ecosystem around the technology. There were a lot of companies making money around the technology.
From there he skipped to the service provider market, sketching out the pieces in the hosting service delivery chain, from hardware down to resellers, and the ecosystems around each piece.
You can make money at any link in that chain, he says, though those links are beginning to overlap.
When you’re selling knowledge and expertise, however (more at the reseller end of the chain), it’s important to understand the customers you’re selling to. Small businesses, in particular, have enormous differences from one vertical market to the next. Likewise with geographic markets.
He says there is a huge explosion coming in the horizontal market for SMBs (things like “hosted infrastructure” and “hosted communication). However, those services have the highest price pressure and cost of acquisition.
Repeating a sentiment from elsewhere in the conference, he says that in delivering services to SMBs a provider has to optimize, partner and offer a full set of services, creating that ecosystem.
This is where he gets into the Parallels product roadmap
The company is focused on using its APS to enable the ecosystem he’s talking about, for starters.
It is also focused on enabling variety of infrastructure options through intuitive self-service control panels. The infrastructure market is huge, but it’s not a single market, he says.
Hosted communication is another huge market, and Parallels is similarly focused on enabling technologies for communication.
It is also focused on enabling services specifically for certain markets of small-business hosting customers, including web designers and ISVs.
The key point in his summary seemed to be the fact that there is all kind of opportunity for profit out there, but not for everyone. The service chains are overlapping, and more and more, your profit is going to come from outside of your core services.
About Liam Eagle
Liam Eagle has worked as a contributor to the Web Host Industry Review since its inception in 2000, and as editor since 2003. He has been editor of the WHIR's print magazine since its launch. His daily involvement in the gathering and reporting of Web hosting news and his regular interaction with Web hosting leaders gives him an uncommonly broad appreciation of the issues and tends facing the business. Through his WHIR blog, Liam spots Web hosting trends and offers opinions on the industry-wide impacts of major developments and the motivation behind big announcements. Follow him on Twitter @liameagle
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