Parallels Plesk Panel 9.2 Update!

Here’s what you may know:

Parallels Plesk Panel is an easy to use control panel that automates burdensome tasks quickly and efficiently. In addition, it is the only control panel that offers the direct availability of hundreds of applications to end users and fully integrates with other Parallels products, including Parallels Plesk Billing, which eliminates the need for third party software.

Here’s what you may not know:

The newest version now includes migration tools that are designed to let partners migrate servers from older versions of Parallels Plesk Panel and C-Panel with ease.

And… for anyone who has ever struggled with junk mail – check this out:

Parallels Plesk Panel now includes Greylisting: a spam scrubbing technique that bounces emails from unknown providers on their first send and then later accepts the email after a short period of time. The reason it works is that spammers anticipate that most of their addressees will bounce and typically will only send an email once. Faking a bounce will be enough to prevent you from ever seeing the spam and only delay strange emails by a few minutes. Pretty awesome!

For more information and downloads – go to: www.parallels.com/products/plesk.

A Shining...Star.

Most of you are already familiar with Parallels Automation, our award winning hosting automation control panel.  Today I thought I’d tell you about how Star (www.star.co.uk), the largest independent business-to-business Internet services provider in the UK, is using this fabulous product to shorten their time to market and reduce their total costs of ownership (TCO). Specifically, Star wanted to improve the end-user experience and reduce support requests by giving customers control over their services….while at the same time, increasing overall cost efficiency.

Enter Parallels. Parallels Operations Automation in combination with Parallels Plesk Panel was able to help on all accounts by enabling customers to automate their hosting services in real time, saving Star money in terms of help desk support calls. By automating, Star was able to reduce the amount of man hours spent on complex repetitive back-end tasks, reducing TCO by freeing up staff to focus on revenue-generation and delivering new services to the market more quickly. In addition, Parallels Automation now provides Star with the ability to quickly add additional services to their portfolio, increasing customer retention and revenue per user.

If you’re interested in learning more, you can read the full case study.

Every day is "Earth Day" with SaaS!

Especially today, on Earth Day, we celebrate positive trends in the direction of Green IT, specifically…. the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) Model!

Typically IT is not very green. It consumes a fair amount of power and it’s our increasing reliance on technology that is largely blamed for global warming.  With that in mind, some IT architecture models are more energy efficient than others, and adoption of the SaaS model is definitely a step in the right direction. 

Enter SaaS. Clearly SaaS saves a lot of energy by more efficiently using computing resources and reducing carbon dioxide emissions.  Consumers worldwide are beginning to realize just how much centralized processing and a shared services model contribute to a smaller carbon footprint!

In addition, SaaS centralizes data center operations to use less equipment and a small fraction of the supporting facility costs….which means less costs associated with servers and their accompanied maintenance/upkeep. In a time when "going green" is high on many companies' priority lists, SaaS provides a great way to improve business processes on both fronts.

IT folks should sleep well at night knowing their SaaS applications are helping to save Mother Earth. Whoever said it's not easy being green...

________________________________________________________________________________

PM World Today explained the whole thing very nicely in an article published in February 2009:

Less Fossil Fuels

SaaS solutions enable telecommuting. This means that you no longer have employees wasting fuel by driving to work and getting stuck in traffic. With SaaS solutions, you can work in your home, a coffee shop, or your local bookstore. All you need is a wireless laptop and a cell phone. More choice in your work environment also leads to smoother relations with colleagues and less stress in your life.

Less Energy

SaaS allows the sharing of resources, like carpooling. Instead of one server in your company serving one population of users sporadically, an equivalent server can sit in the data center of a SaaS provider and serve multiple companies worldwide, taking advantage of the inevitable low activity during the night in the U.S. to provide service to European or Asian customers. Computers use energy whether they're active or idle, so the computer in your company's server closet is wasting energy at night. SaaS servers are not as wasteful of energy in this regard.

Less Landfill Waste

Consolidating servers is not just about saving energy. Consider the fact that every computer that is bought eventually ends up as waste and this waste is pretty toxic.

Less Paper

SaaS solutions often provide an application program interface, making integrations to accounting and other automated systems a snap. These integrations avoid environmentally damaging paper document creation and processes that are based on human resources and therefore error-prone.

                                                                                                Source: Published in PM World Today – February 2009

Free Parallels!

We were thrilled to see the announcement last week that SoftLayer is presenting Parallels Plesk Panel 9.0 for free with all new purchases of its dedicated server offerings.

The offer will provide SoftLayer’s customers with the ability to create flexible service plans to offer a complete, end to end solution that conserves valuable resources, ultimately enabling resellers to be more profitable.

Parallels Plesk Panel 9.0 has an easy to learn interface with a simple look and feel. It’s the only control panel which offers the direct availability of hundreds of applications for end users while integrating with other Parallels products, including Parallels Plesk Billing 6.0. Basically… Parallels Plesk Panel 9.0 is the most advanced control panel on the market today - hands down. And for free??? Fuhgedaboudit.

The promotion runs from April 1, 2009 to April 14, 2009 and coincides with SoftLayer’s launch of Parallels Plesk Billing 6.0 and Parallels Plesk Panel 9.0. To take advantage of the offer, visit www.softlayer.com/specials.html and enter the promotional code "Plesk". 

ServInt

Earlier this week we announced that ServInt is virtualizing its Dedicated Server offerings with our OS-level virtualization solution, Parallels Virtuozzo Containers.

So…why is that so cool? Well, it’s pretty unusual for dedicated servers to be virtualized because the hardware isn’t being shared amongst multiple users and therefore does not need to be partitioned.

So…why is ServInt doing it? They’re using the virtualization technologyto reduce their management and support burdens.

Parallels Virtuozzo Containers provides scalability to support the offering by making it easy to move server content from one hardware environment to another, with little-to-no downtime. The customized management tools included reduce ServInt’s management burden, allowing the hosting provider to re-focus on sales and customer support without the worry of managing co-location space, power, cooling and hardware support. See…told you it was cool.

Want to hear more? Just can’t get enough?? Check out the entire press release here.