Parallels Rapidly Expands Asia-Pacific Presence, Driving Regional Demand for Hosting and Cloud Services Experiences Over 75 Percent Regional Growth

Announces new deployments, partners and distributors from across the region

SINGAPORE, 23 September 2011 – Parallels® (www.parallels.com), the hosting and Cloud services enablement leader, today announced it has dramatically increased its presence in Asia Pacific, as the company hosted the first day of its annual Parallels APAC Summit in Singapore. Parallels recent growth developments include the signings of several new major partners, distributors and deployments, as the company continues to help its partners stimulate and meet the growing demand for Cloud services from small and medium businesses (SMB) across the region.

“We’re extremely pleased to experience the visible results of the aggressive investment we’ve made in Asia Pacific over the last four years, as we continue to drive and meet the growing demand from SMBs for Cloud services,” said Birger Steen, CEO of Parallels. “We will continue to invest heavily in the region and help our partners experience profitable growth.”

Strengthening Regional Presence

Over the last twelve months, Parallels has built new relationships with large hosters and Communications Services Providers across the region, including KT, the largest telecommunication service provider in Korea, leading the way. Parallels’ growing list of Service Provider partners also includes Datec, iiNET, Ride, Softbank Korea, Telekom Malaysia and UberGlobal in Australia. These and other partners continue to rely on Parallels for its Cloud services delivery solutions to help them meet the growing IT needs of the regions’ SMBs.

“Our Asia Pacific partners represent strong regional hosting brands, and we’re delighted to be able to help them quickly and easily profit from the shift to the Cloud. We are thrilled to see the growing diversity of players who continue to market their own unique value propositions focused on serving the diverse IT needs of small and medium businesses in this region,” added Steen.

“There are a number of SMB customers in Korea who have been waiting for critical business applications that are easy to subscribe to with no upfront costs. And being small and nimble, they do not want to worry about updates and software maintenance,” said Jung Min Woo, Vice President at KT. "Parallels Automation has the ability to address this critical business need, and takes it another step further by enabling our reseller partners to quickly offer on-demand software that SMBs need to be successful in today’s competitive environment."

New Distributor Partnerships

Parallels has also expanded its network of distribution partners in developing markets with the appointment of Kryptos in India, PromptNow in Thailand, and Vinacis in Vietnam. These three new distributors will significantly grow Parallels’ presence in each market through their relationships and expertise in hosting and Cloud services provider space. This market expansion allows other hosters and Cloud services providers and resellers to increase their own profitability, deploy new services quickly, and reduce operational costs.

“We’re excited to partner with Parallels and leverage its expertise to improve our offerings through best-in-class automation and virtualization solutions for our customers in India. Our goal is to enable even more of our customers to rapidly adopt Cloud services effectively and with less effort, thus helping them profit from the Cloud,” said Prasanna Ram, CEO of Kryptos.

Enabling New Cloud Entrants

Further driving Parallels’ business in Asia Pacific is the addition of a portfolio of leading partners who help ISVs, VARs, ISPs and small hosting providers resell Cloud services with minimal upfront costs and quicker time-to-market. Players entering the hosting space can get started today with Parallels’ partners including LuxCloud, UberGlobal, and ReadySpace.

“By partnering with Parallels, we can provide our SMB customers with the ability to self-service their operational needs effectively and quickly. Furthermore, we wanted to enhance the user experience with more services at affordable prices from various ISVs. Parallels Automation for Cloud Marketplace provides ReadySpace with a seamless point of contact to manage these alliances without to negotiate directly with the ISVs,” said David Loke, Group Executive Director, ReadySpace.

Since establishing its presence in Asia Pacific, Parallels has partnered with regional hosters and Cloud service providers to help build and meet the demand for Cloud and hosting solutions among SMBs. Parallels will continue to invest and innovate in its hosting and Cloud services delivery software, expertise and partner ecosystem to make it easy for service providers to grow and profit from the Cloud by meeting the IT needs of SMBs. The company’s own regional growth is reflective of its just-released proprietary research, “Parallels SMB Cloud Insights™”, that reports on the most profitable and growing markets and services for the SMB Cloud market in Asia-Pacific. This new research indicated the rapidly accelerating rate at which SMBs in the region are realizing the benefits of migrating to Cloud infrastructure and hosted services.