White-labeling the ‘managed’ cloud

Would it be true to suggest that a product only truly comes of age when it can be re-packaged, re-labeled or re-purposed in a simple to manage context that boosts its proliferation and sales potential? Would it also be true to suggest that cloud computing is now entering this zone and witnessing a maturity that will see it become more widespread than ever before?

My Auntie Chris used to work for a company in Brighouse, Yorkshire that took in those nasty Goldstar VHS players in the 80s and stuck a new label on them before sending them off to Dixons and various other nefarious resellers. They didn’t make VHS players of course; they simply pumped the generic boxes out with new badges on them.

It’s happened to credit cards too hasn’t it? Now you can have a ASDA bank account I think. Is ASDA a bank? I don’t think so. They simply re-package a white labeled banking service I imagine.

So to the cloud, ISVs and independent hosters have been looking for cloud computing muscle that that they can not only sell, but also manage from a billing and tracking perspective that also lets them provide flexible customisable accounts. There are various players out there trying for a slice of this pie, Parallels comes to mind as the company pumping out arguably the most regular product updates in this space.

There’s news fermenting this week regarding the launch of Parallels Panel 10 SMB Edition. This is said to be a hosted control panel offering designed to help hosting and cloud services providers to rapidly enter the growing software-as-a-service market – and (the clue is in the name) this product is aimed at the SMB space. Not too big and enterprise-style clunky then if you believe the hype.

White-labeled cloud services are not breaking news this week and we’ve heard about this concept for some time now. But I am trying to put them into context with respect to the wider maturity that they speak of in terms of the cloud computing space in total. Parallels says that its Partner Marketplace product is a central feature of Parallels Panel 10 SMB Edition control panel and that it lets hosters profit from the SaaS market by offering the most popular applications through the control panel.

I spoke directly on this subject late last night to Jack Zubarev who is president, Service Provider Worldwide at Parallels and he told me, “Traditionally, SMBs were at a disadvantage to the enterprise as they were impeded by high-cost and limited resources needed to buy, deploy, and implement sophisticated applications that would improve business performance. This is now changing with the advent of cloud services such as SaaS. For example, when you look at salesforce.com, there are a lot of happy SMB customers who could not have afforded this type of application if they were to deploy it on-premise."

"Going forward SMBs will want a choice of applications but would prefer to go to a one-stop-shop to get these instead of the hassle of managing a variety of vendors. Hence there is massive opportunity for service providers and ISVs to build revenue streams by partnering to deliver a new breed of cloud services to customers.”