Infobox (Parallels Automation Cloud Infrastructure (PACI))

Parallels announced in October, 2012 the Russia's first implementation of the product Parallels Automation for Cloud Infrastructure (PACI) intended for management of virtual data centers.

Implementation "infrastructures as service" (IaaS) on the basis of PACI is performed in the St. Petersburg provider Infobox. The solution was developed by the resident Skolkovo of Parallels Research, Parallels subsidiary company, and addressed to the enterprises of medium and small business. The volume of the grant received by Parallels from Skolkovo Foundation was 150 million rubles. The similar amount of development was invested by the company.

PACI is founded on technology of container virtualization, and as reports Parallels, unlike other known services of lease of cloud infrastructure, including Amazon EC2, gives to clients of data centers an opportunity "on the fly" to change parameters of the virtual server, paying at the same time only that time when additional capacities were used.

The CEO of Infobox Bakhtiarov Alexey reported CNews that non-commercial testing of service will begin on October 17, 2012 and will end on February 1, 2013. Since October 16 Infobox began collecting of applications for participation in testing first of all from the companies of medium and small business. Until the end of November, 2012 the provider is going to accept 1 thousand participants.

According to Bakhtiarov, for each account 100 GB of disk space, up to 4 GB of RAM and on 2 cores of the processor are selected. If necessary the provider is ready to discuss increase in resources for certain participants.

If interest in testing is higher, Infobox will consider a question of selection of an additional pool of test accounts. It is expected that by the end of 2013 in "cloud" of Infobox about 5 thousand companies will work.

From the moment of product output in March, 2012 the product PACI was started at several foreign providers: BMIT (Malta), ReadySpace (Hong Kong, Singapore), LunaCloud/Claranet (Portugal, Great Britain), Tsukaeru (Japan), reports Parallels. Even more than 10 projects are on different test stages.

The marketing director and to alliances Parallels in Russia, in the Middle East and Africa Anisimov Konstantin expects that the number of the potential customers interested in installation at themselves PACI will be no more than two tens companies in Russia: these are large data centers, hosters, a telecom operators - service providers.

At the same time around each installation the large partner ecosystem including to several hundred partners reselling services of such service provider can be built. "If to consider at least the fact that small and average hosters in our country more than 400, and the model of a reselling is attractive by lack of capital costs, then services of "the Russian Amazon EC2" can have impressive perspectives for distribution", - Anisimov says.

By Parallels estimates, penetration of IAAS in the Russian SMB makes about 6%, i.e. from one million existing "live" enterprises of medium and small business (about 4 million registered) know about 60-70 thousand about existence of "infrastructure as service".

Considering a rudimentary status of IAAS in a segment of medium and small business in Russia, plans of Infobox for attraction by the end of 2013 about 5 thousand users in clouds look a noticeable gain.