For the re-invigorated Application Packaging Standard (APS) to really take off its chief protagonist, hosting and Cloud services engine vendor, Parallels, has to do what it can to attract ISVs to use it.
That is why Serguei Bellousov, the company’s Chairman and Chief Architect and a serial entrepreneur in his own right, announced at the recent Parallels Summit that the company has just launched a $100m co-operative investment programme with Runa Capital. Known as the Runa Capital-Parallels APS Accelerator Program, it will have both eyes set firmly on funding and supporting software vendors that use APS as a delivery vehicle.
APS takes a standardised approach to the distribution and deployment of hosted applications, packaging them up together with information about and links to the environment needed to run them in hosted Cloud environment. This makes it possible for a Cloud application to be loaded into any APS-compliant hosted service, anywhere is the world, and run with little or no configuration expertise or tuning work required.
In this way hosters can rapidly build up an increasingly rich set of applications and services to support their customers needs with the minimum of effort on their part. At the same time ISVs get a `write once/deploy many’ environment, rather than having to hand-craft each deployment to a new hoster.
APS therefore offers the potential to become the Cloud equivalent of loading packaged applications onto a Windows PC.
To date there are some 300 applications available under APS, and Parallels is determined to see this number grow, hence the launch of the Accelerator Program. It will focus on making strategic investments, consisting of both financial and co-marketing support, for new and emerging ISVs that create innovative, APS-certified revenue-generating applications. A key focus will be on those ISVs creating software that appeal to Parallels’ key target end users, the SMBs, and the service provider community that is addressing that marketplace.
Belloussov reckons the Cloud marketplace is on the cusp of becoming a serious gold-rush, with the SMB community set to play a major part and generate serious revenue for vendors participating in it.
As a founder of such companies as unified communications vendor, Infratel, and storage management systems vendor, Acronis, as well as being a founder of Parallels, Belloussov has considerable experience to bring to the Accelerator Program party. He is also an existing partner in Runa Capital, which has also participated in funding NginX, now one of the leading webserver systems used by the likes of Facebook and DropBox, and Jelastic, a start up offering a highly-scalable hosting environment for Java-based applications.
ISVs interested in the Accelerator Program should first contact Runa Capital at aps@runacap.com for more information before they decide to APS-certify their software.
