(The Hosting News) – On Tuesday, February 14^th, hosting enthusiasts descended upon Orlando, Florida for one of the industry’s largest yearly events: The Parallels 2012 Summit. Parallels represents one of the largest companies in hosting, providing the industry with cloud automation solutions, server and desktop virtualization, control panels and more.

This year the event was held for three days at Orlando’s luxurious Gaylord Palms Resort and Convention Center. Aside from presentations from top Parallels team members, the event featured attendees and participants from a variety of companies throughout the community.

One of the event’s biggest highlights came when former Apple chief evangelist Guy Kawasaki provided his unique perspective on the tech industry as he discussed the role of social media and emphasized the need for companies to enchant their customers in order to find success (Kawasaki first served with Apple during the company’s early days in the 80′s).

An early presentation featured Parallels CEO Birger Steen who discussed the role that cloud plays for small to medium sized businesses in a speech titled, “The trillion dollar battle for the plugged-in SMB: What you need to know to profit and grow.” Steen specifically outlined his company’s vision, emphasizing Parallels’ intention to include its technology in worldwide data centers. Also held on the first full day was a cloud Panel discussion focusing on SMBs. Interestingly enough, it featured top hosting execs such as 1&1 Internet CEO Oliver Mauss, Open-Xchange CEO Rafael Laguna and Microsoft’s Rich Cannon. The panel itself mostly focused on marketing strategies. Other presentations that day featured Parallels CTO Michael Toutonghi who discussed APS and Intel Senior Technical Marketing Engineer Mike Chevalier who discussed IaaS. Meanwhile, Parallels’ Oleg Melnikov talked about automation and highlighted expanded services such as Lync by Microsoft and Hosted PBX. Virtualization was also a highlighted issue on the first day as James Bottomley and Amir Sharif of Parallels discussed the company’s product, Parallels Automation for Cloud Infrastructure which is set for its latest release this year.

On the final day of the summit, Parallels stepped into the future with Parallels Chairman Serguei Beloussov outlining how cloud would be shaped within the next decade with SoftLayer CEO Lane Crosby later discussing IT in a speech titled, “The evolution of IT hosting services: What’s next?” Another presentation on Thursday included a talk by Parallels VP of Marketing Kim Johnston who discussed website analytics and optimization. Aside from just presentations, there was some big news made during the summit when SpamExperts announced an expansion of its partnership with Parallels. Cloud solutions provider CloudLinux also announced the release of a virtualized File System during the course of the event.

Overall, Parallels 2012 was heavily attended, drawing in the industry’s leading participants and insiders. However, there were particular features that made this year’s summit especially unique, whether it was the great food or a range of first time attendees.

Parallels will be held next year in Las Vegas, Nevada. For more information regarding the event, visit: http://www.parallels.com/summit/2012/

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