Parallels Press Release:

Innovation guru Jeremy Gutsche, Small Business expert Tim Harmon and VMware President Tod Nielsen to Deliver Keynote Speeches at Parallels Summit 2013

December 12, 2012

Innovation guru Jeremy Gutsche, Small Business expert Tim Harmon and VMware President Tod Nielsen to Deliver Keynote Speeches at Parallels Summit 2013.

RENTON, WA — December 12, 2012. Parallels, the hosting and cloud services enablement leader, announced its roster of exciting keynote speakers for Parallels Summit 2013, the leading global annual gathering of the cloud industry, scheduled from February 4-6, 2013, at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, Nevada. Parallels featured keynote speakers include Jeremy Gutsche, an innovation expert, award-winning author of Exploiting Chaos, and founder of ; Tim Harmon who as Principal Analyst, Forrester Research, Inc. serves technology marketing professionals in developing SMB go-to-market channels; and Tod Nielsen, Co-President of Application Platform, VMware. Each are industry experts whose collective insight is highly sought-after for creating strategies to market IT services to small and medium businesses (SMBs).

Members of Parallels’ leadership team will also deliver keynote speeches – including Birger Steen, CEO; Serguei Beloussov, Executive Chairman of the Board & Chief Architect; and Jack Zubarev, President, Marketing and Alliances. These hosting industry authorities will share what Parallels has been developing in the last year including the latest innovations in Parallels software, offering attendees deep insight into their customers, and access to the broadest ecosystem of partners;--all to make it easy for you to sell cloud services to SMBs.

Parallels Summit will feature rich sessions with integrated in-depth content arranged in three distinct tracks:

• Business track will feature innovative ways to understand and more deeply analyze customers behaviors
• Technical track is focused on how to make the best use of the latest innovations from Parallels R&D
• Developer track is for those who want to build and integrate rich services using the Application Packaging Standard (APS) in a way that was never possible before

In addition to the keynotes and training sessions, conference attendees will receive a detailed overview of Parallels product roadmap in advance of public announcements. Parallels SMB Cloud Insights™ research will be updated with all new analysis for US, Global, Mexico, and Brazil exploring what services SMBs say they want to buy from cloud service providers.

“I am looking forward to Parallels Summit 2013. Gathering the brightest and most innovative minds in the industry, Parallels Summit creates moments for attendees to make important connections.” said Birger Steen, CEO, Parallels, Attendees will discover the latest solutions, gain insight from industry experts, network with their peers and move their business forward. All this in just a couple of days because the entire ecosystem will be there.”

Parallels invites attendees to register now and join the more than 1,500 industry influencers, leading technology analysts, media editors and reporters and online influentials from across the globe. From cloud service providers and developers, hosting companies, communication service providers (CSPs) to value-added resellers (VARs) and independent software vendors (ISVs), Parallels Summit 2013 is an unrivaled opportunity to build relationships with the leading players in the cloud space.

Keynote speakers at Parallels Summit 2012 include:

• Jeremy Gutsche is an innovation expert, the award-winning author of Exploiting Chaos, "one of North America's most requested keynote speakers", a judge on BNN's TV show ,'The Pitch', and the founder of TrendHunter.com, the world's largest, most popular collection of cutting edge trends, attracting nearly 1 BILLION views. He studied innovation at Stanford, received his MBA from Queen's University and graduated as a Chancellor Scholar in finance from University of Calgary, where he was later awarded Graduate of the Decade. Prior to Trend Hunter, he grew a $1 billion portfolio of products at Capital One, as one of their youngest business directors. He is routinely sourced by the media, from The Economist to CNN and Entertainment Tonight to The New York Times. He has been described as "a new breed of trend spotter" by The Guardian, "an eagle eye" by Global TV, an "Oracle" by the Globe and Mail, an "intellectual can of Red Bull" by Association Week and "on the forefront of cool" by MTV.
• Tim Harmon serves Technology Marketing Professionals in developing SMB go-to-market channels via the application of best practices, business plans, metrics, tools, resources, relationships, and competitive intelligence. His research focuses on the impact of cloud computing and digital marketing on demand chain business models. Tim is a leading expert on business applications software (enterprise resource planning, business intelligence, marketing automation, and social project/collaboration management) and networking and hardware technologies. Prior to joining Forrester, Tim served in executive management and mentoring roles in the vendor, user, industry analyst, and venture capital aspects of the IT industry. He has been a featured speaker at many industry conferences involving business intelligence, data warehousing, performance management, and enterprise applications and has been published in Austin-American Statesman, BI Review, DM Review, andIntelligent Enterprise.
• Tod Nielsen joined VMware in January 2009 and leads the company’s application platform business, bringing more than 20 years of leadership experience in enterprise software and application development. Most recently, he was president and chief executive officer of Borland Software, where he had led the company since November 2005. Prior to Borland, he served as senior vice president of marketing and global sales support for Oracle and was chief marketing officer and executive vice president of engineering at BEA Systems, where he oversaw BEA’s worldwide marketing strategy, operations and research and development. Nielsen joined BEA after the acquisition of his private company, Crossgain Inc., where he served as CEO. He also spent 12 years with Microsoft in various roles including general manager of database and developer tools, vice president of developer tools, and vice president of Microsoft’s platform group.”
• Birger Steen, CEO, Parallels, will deliver a keynote entitled, “Next generation software for the next generation Cloud made Easy,” SMB’s appetite for more complex cloud services continues to accelerate. This requires service providers to innovate faster. Steen will demonstrate Parallels latest and most innovative products that were designed specifically to meet SMB’s requirements. You will hear from Parallels leaders, successful partners and customers how they are transforming the way they do business with these products. Steen will also recognize the winners of the Parallels 2012 Partner Awards, honoring Parallels’ service provider partners across eight categories for their outstanding achievements with Parallels products, solutions and services.
• Serguei Beloussov, Executive Chairman of the Board and Chief Architect, Parallels. Author of “Why The Source Of Venture Capital Is As Important As The Money Itself “. He’s responsible for helping many companies develop value and scale in a very short period of time. Serguei unplugged: Winners and losers in the cloud” is based on this unique bird’s eye view of the service provider landscape. Serguei will deliver the unvarnished truth of what is happening in our industry. He will share with you some of the smartest and dumbest business moves he has seen with hosters this year. You will hear the five steps to developing a successful company that scales.
• Jack Zubarev, President, Marketing & Alliances, Parallels, will host, “Who wants to be a hosting millionaire.” This light-hearted and informative session is the perfect final keynote to take people into the fun, food and drink of the Closing Reception which immediately follows. Attendees have a chance to win some cash if they make it on stage and show that they know a thing or two about the hosting industry. Attendees will get to laugh while learning many key driving factors you need to know to survive and thrive in the hosting business.

Attendees can also meet and interact with other leading players in the hosting industry, including key executives and technical staff from Platinum and Gold event sponsors IBM, Symantec, Microsoft, Enom, LuxCloud and OpenXchange among the over 50 event sponsors from across the entire hosting ecosystem.

A detailed agenda of planned sessions and activities is available at http://www.parallels.com/summit/2013/agenda/. To register, and for information about training and certification sessions, please visit http://www.parallels.com/summit/2013/.

About Parallels
Parallels is a worldwide leader in hosting and cloud service enablement and desktop virtualization. Founded in 1999, Parallels is a fast-growing company with more than 900 employees in North America, Europe, and Asia.

For more information, please visit www.parallels.com/spp, follow us on Twitter at www.twitter.com/ParallelsCloud, and Like Us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/ParallelsCloud.