Parallels Automation Delivers Scalable Cloud IaaS Infrastructure Services 
Parallels, a hosting and cloud services company, is offering Parallels Automation for Cloud Infrastructure (PACI), a scalable solution for hosters and service providers. PACI’s modular approach to IaaS offers hosting firms an alternative to virtual private servers with a wide range of flexible capabilities.
Parallels, a hosting and cloud services company, has launched Parallels Automation for Cloud Infrastructure (PACI), a scalable solution service providers can use to deliver cloud infrastructure as a service (IaaS) to small and medium-size businesses (SMBs).
PACI is designed to give service providers control over a full suite of hosting offerings, including provisioning, billing, self-service management and security. It delivers an integrated management panel so IT professionals can create, scale and manage cloud-hosted infrastructure, virtual datacenters and software-as-a-service (SaaS) apps, according to Parallels CEO Birger Steen, CEO.
PACI is designed to offer more scalability and flexibility than traditional virtual private servers, Steen noted, but offering providers access to massive amounts of CPU, memory or storage (up to 1000s of servers for just minutes at a time.
In addition., PACI exposes APIs that allow service providers to custom write their own business logic, and even make load balancing available directly to customers via the end user portal. For security, PACI provides a software-based vLAN is delivered by default; where a single firewall can be applied to all instances.
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PACI is based on a modular architecture, which allows service providers can deploy the complete solution or certain components, Steen added. This approach means service providers could use the entire PACI’s billing service or online store, or could integrate any of those PACI components with billing solutions, e-commerce or other services they already have in place, he added. .
Inside Parallels Automation CI Modular IaaS solution:
PACI modular features include:
- Elastic scalability, allowing providers to adjust IT resources to meet demand as it increases or decreases.
- Use-based pricing, lets hosting companies just pay for what they use.
- A simple user interface, plus access to APIs: PACI’s interface is easy to sue for users with various technical skills. And easily-accessible APIs give advanced developers programmatic control over the entire hosting environment.
- Self-service provisioning and administration: With PACI customers can easily provision their own cloud services by simply clicking on-screen panels.
- Access to complementary infrastructure services to create a rich end-to-end experience for cloud clients. PACI works with CloudFlare for fully-managed content delivery network (CDN) capabilities, and Scality for cloud storage management.
- Deployable on any hardware.
One PACI early adopter said the modular PACI approach allows it to easily expand its cloud offerings for its clients. “One of the advantages of the Parallels platform is that it has allowed us to dramatically expand our product portfolio and ultimately be a single vendor of choice for our customers’ business communication and collaboration needs,” said Chris Damvakaris, vice president for sales and business development at Apptix. “On top of being able to offer Hosted Exchange, Hosted SharePoint, and VoIP, Parallels Automation allows us to roll out web conferencing, secure IM, online backup, DNS hosting and Web site hosting.”
