Parallels joins the OpenStack push

Another, and potentially quite important rung has been added to the ladder of industry support for OpenStack by the announcement that Parallels is now a corporate sponsor of the OpenStack Foundation. This adds to the weight that seems to be pushing OpenStack towards a position of de facto `industry standard’ cloud service delivery platform.

To date, Parallels’ place in the cloud world has seemed to have two primary strands: one as a provider of cloud management and delivery tools to Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) looking to service the needs of the burgeoning SMB community, and the other as strong partner of Microsoft. The latter was undoubtedly not hindered by the fact that a large proportion of the company’s top management have come via the Redmond empire.

The company has a long track record in collaboration efforts, being keen to foster collaboration between its CSP customers and the ISV community through the use of tools such as the Application Packaging Standard (APS) where it is a key player. It is also a founding member of the Internet Infrastructure Coalition, which was formed to foster the movement of data and counter legislative moves such as the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA) from becoming law.

The move to formalise its support for the open source cloud computing platform, marks a major step both sideways and forwards. By aligning its long-term strategy to support OpenStack it is making a clear statement that very much in the open source camp. It is also a move of some significance to OpenStack, as it brings to the fold one of the key players in helping SMB end users build and exploit cloud services.

To that end the overall goal of the Parallels OpenStack initiative is to enable service providers to easily deploy OpenStack as their cloud platform for delivering Infrastructure-as-a-Service (Iaas), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). 

It also opens up the possibility of developing the potential of APS. This provides a standard way of wrapping up applications and services with all the tools and optimisation data needed for them to be installed and rapidly implemented on Parallels-based cloud service. Making this available in an OpenStack-compatible form could create one of the most important tools for both CSPs and ISVs as the key medium through which applications get from developer to a running in a production cloud environment.

OpenStack is an open source cloud computing platform that helps organisations manage compute, storage, and networking resources in private and public cloud environments. Service providers, enterprises, government agencies, and academic institutions around the world use OpenStack to power demanding production workloads.

“OpenStack is top-of-mind for many of our service providers” said Birger Steen, Parallels’ CEO.  “Parallels’ deep knowledge of the service provider requirements necessary to install the OpenStack platform will significantly contribute to making it easier and more compelling for companies looking to adopt the technology.”

Parallels’ initial contributions to the OpenStack community will focus on two distinct areas: improving the integration of containers virtualisation within the OpenStack compute layer and helping to optimise OpenStack orchestration for the service provider industry.  The adoption of these technologies within OpenStack will greatly improve the ability of service providers to provide OpenStack-based IaaS, PaaS and SaaS.

“Many service providers in the global mass market hosting industry are adopting OpenStack as a core technology to enable public cloud services,” said Jonathan Bryce, executive director, OpenStack Foundation. “Parallels’ has a strong position in the service provider market and can grow the number of OpenStack clouds by helping them successfully deploy and manage the platform.  We are very pleased to have them supporting the OpenStack Foundation and look forward to their contributions to the OpenStack community.”