Parallels, a leading hosting and cloud services enablement provider, today unveiled support for a Microsoft Azure Pack for Hosting Providers and updates to a collection of cloud service delivery solutions for Microsoft partners at Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference. The solution, developed in collaboration with Microsoft’s server and tools business group, is in addition to the new support of Microsoft Azure Pack for Hosting. Parallels has also updated its support for Microsoft Lync 2013 Hosting Pack, Microsoft Exchange 2013 and Microsoft Office 365. The new product and updated features help make Parallels, a Microsoft Global ISV and Gold Certified Partner, a leading company in enabling Microsoft Cloud solutions via cloud distribution channels.

“With these combined solutions, no one else helps cloud hosting providers significantly speed time to market with the largest service providers in the market.”

To help address small and medium businesses’ growing need for robust cloud solutions, Parallels has been collaborating with Microsoft since 2007 to enable the delivery of cloud services for telecom companies, domain hosting providers, distributors, managed service providers and VARs. This has helped Parallels develop services with value-added support to help its service provider partners drive more revenue faster by offering essential solutions for specific SMB workloads. These solutions include:

Microsoft Azure Pack for Hosting Providers
With this new product announced today, Parallels now helps bring the power of Microsoft’s Azure platform into a domain hosting provider’s datacenter for sales to service provider’s SMB customers. Service providers can now speed their time to market and deliver the latest innovations from Microsoft ahead of their competitors.

Microsoft Office 365
Parallels simultaneously shipped an upgrade to the latest Microsoft Office 365 release, allowing service providers to stay up to date with the latest Microsoft releases. Among the new features included is multi-language support to help address differing regional needs. Parallels now supports more than one third of the Microsoft Office Hosted 365 partners around the globe.

Microsoft Lync Hosting Pack
With an increasing amount of SMBs taking advantage of the benefits that instant, collaborative and unified communication brings them, Parallels simultaneously shipped availability for Microsoft Hosting Pack for Lync. Made available to customers in May, solution providers can now add this market changing technology to their overall cloud services portfolio easily and quickly. Parallels partners have more than tripled the number of hosted Microsoft Lync seats in the past year.

Microsoft Exchange 2013
Parallels helps service providers stay current and competitive with Microsoft Exchange through multiple upgrades. Parallels partners continue to grow hosted Exchange at over 40 percent year-over-year. Parallels builds on its longstanding partnership with Microsoft Exchange by supporting more than 750,000 hosted email subscribers under management, with more than 75 hosting providers around the globe.

Application Packing Standard
Parallels has been partnering with Microsoft to support the growing Application Packing Standard (APS) ecosystem that helps package and deliver critical services quickly. This includes solutions like email migration, hosted desktop services on Windows Server from Dell, white glove email migration services from Mural, automated email services from BitTitan, security and archiving services from Symantec, McAfee and SpamExperts, and Windows based backup services form BackupAgent. By being a part of the Parallels APS ecosystem, ISVs can help service providers launch services faster to market with lower deployment cost and superior customer experiences. Parallels partners are selling upsell and cross sell services of Microsoft core services at an average growth rate of over a 100 percent year-over-year.

“We are excited to have Microsoft as a partner in the Parallels ecosystem and we see a big opportunity to provide their wide range of innovative collaborative and hosted solutions to our customers,” said John Zanni, vice president, Service Provider Marketing and Alliances at Parallels. “With these combined solutions, no one else helps cloud hosting providers significantly speed time to market with the largest service providers in the market.”

“We are thrilled to expand our long-standing partnership with Parallels as they help us reach the broad and diverse cloud distribution channel and speed time to market for our valued partners,” said Jon Roskill, corporate vice president, World Wide Partner Group, Microsoft. “Few companies understand the hosting and cloud needs of SMBs better than Parallels, and they continue to demonstrate it with how fast they accelerate deployments for new Microsoft hosting partners.”