Editor's note: Birger Steen is CEO of Parallels, the world’s leader in hosting and cloud services enablement. The following post is from him:
Dell has a long history of making it easy for customers to get what they need. I remember helping a friend’s father get a new Dell PC at an Austin direct retail shop in 1990. I was amazed at how easy they made it to get up and running. Dell had taken out so much friction of what was then usually a convoluted and long value chain. At Parallels, we pride ourselves on being the hosting and cloud services enablement market leader. We work with service providers to meet the IT needs of small and medium businesses – and just like Dell, we are obsessed with making it easy, with eliminating friction. So when Dell is moving to serve its customers in the cloud, we feel there’s a natural fit. Together, we make it easy for Dell’s business customers to purchase and use the cloud services they need.
In fact, we work so well together that in a matter of weeks, Parallels and Dell were able to deploy Parallels Automation and launch Microsoft Office 365.
Of course, this is only the beginning. Now that Dell has deployed Parallels Automation, it’s easy for them to add more cloud services. Parallels Automation software includes delivery capabilities for Microsoft applications and other services that have been certified with the Application Packaging Standard (APS), a "pluggable" approach to enabling hosted and cloud applications and services. With over 400 cloud applications for Dell to choose from and more being added every day, Dell will be able to give their customers exactly what they need for their business.
Try it out and let me know what you think.