SMBs driving cloud service provider interest in Parallels Automation

In past weeks, Parallels has announced new or extended partnerships with a number of providers in the Asia Pacific region, namely StarHub in Singapore, and iiNet in Australia and Japanese provider Tsukaeru.net.

Source: Parallels. Zanni.

"We're seeing more and more service providers selling into the mid-market," said John Zanni, Chief Marketing Officer - Service Providers, Parallels. "There's an unmet need in the SMB space that service providers, hosters and telcos are providing."

Zanni explained that the convergence of several cloud adoption trends is transforming the service provider industry and driving service provider interest in the Parallels Automation platform, which has been adopted by 50% of the top 40 telcos around the world today. 

Firstly, small and medium sized business* (SMB) understanding of the potential of the cloud is more advanced today, spurring interest in cloud adoption, Zanni said. According to 2013 research by the Boston Consulting Group, SMBs which use cloud services outperform their peers in revenue growth and in the creation of new jobs, he noted. 

"They talk to friends, do research online. By the time they call someone and say 'We're interested', they're really very far down the line in the purchasing process," Zanni observed. "They're much more educated than they used to be in the past."

Secondly, the one-to-one relationship between the services that SMBs want and the type of service provider they go to has evolved. Instead of approaching a telco for broadband provision, buying productivity software from a vendor such as Microsoft or Google, then going to a hosting provider to get a domain, SMBs can go to a single cloud service provider to obtain all of these services, Zanni said. 

"Service providers have to educate SMBs, to tell them that they don't have to go to a specialist for each of these services. They can get a set of them from one provider, and then it's easier to manage them. Office 365 is never sold alone; you need a domain, you have to connect it to Office 365," he said.

Thirdly, SMBs globally have gone from using an average of one cloud service in 2009 to five today and will use a projected nine by 2017. "Data is one of them, the next one is that they need a domain and web presence, and third is communications and collaboration (UC), Office 365 or Google Apps, they need file sharing services, backup is also in high demand, or disaster recovery as a service," Zanni said of the core cloud services SMBs typically subscribe to. "Then it varies after that based on company size. It could be conferencing, or accounting or human resources."

Adopting multiple cloud services comes with challenges, however. The headaches that SMBs face when they juggle integration, billing, and provisioning issues with several providers has created a market opportunity for cloud service providers to offer one-stop cloud services in conjunction with capability such as that offered by Parallels Automation. The advantages of working with a single provider for multiple services include services that should work well together, with everything itemised under one bill.

"If you're doing a manual connection, it's very error prone, but if you have an automated system that does it, and does it very smoothly, you're good to go," Zanni noted on the integration process. "Our platform aggregates and automates services. It allows service providers to sell more services."

Cases in point: Parallels Automation will enable StarHub to add more components to cloud-based productivity suite Office 365, while iiNet, which has been selling hosted email on the Parallels platform, will now offer Microsoft Lync as an add-on service, Zanni said. 

Parallels Automation is also ideal for ensuring continuity. If a reseller should shut down, Parallels Automation can easily allow the cloud service provider to move customers over to another reseller. And if the cloud service provider shuts down, another Parallel Automations user can take over very easily, added Zanni.

"Our data shows that the opportunity in Asia is accelerating," Zanni concluded. "Service providers are growing, and launching more and more services that they are actually selling. There'll be a tipping point in Asia in the next few years. The numbers will be even bigger next year."

*Parallels defines micro businesses as those with one to nine staff; small businesses as those with ten to 99 staff, and medium sized businesses as those with 100 to 250 staff.