We are talking with the vice president of Parallels.
For this column, spontaneity and unexpectedness of materials has become a kind of tradition. Today, quite suddenly, I managed to talk informally with the Vice President of Parallels Nikolay Dobrovolsky, within the framework of the material I will cite excerpts from our conversation.
Our readers could remember Parallels for their review of Parallels Access, a product for remote control of PCs from mobile devices, as well as for an interview with one of the company's developers. So my correspondence acquaintance with the company and its products took place, after moving to Moscow I managed to personally get acquainted with the representatives of the company and visit their office, here we met this time too.
At the moment, the company employs about 300 people in 10 countries of the world, the head office is in America. What about Russia? How are your successes in our market, is it a priority for the company?
The main markets for us, of course, are the USA, Europe (Germany and the UK can be distinguished) and Japan. Russia accounts for about 1% of sales. При этом здесь находится наш крупнейший R&D центр. There are only three of them: in Moscow, Sliema (Malta) and Tallinn. The Moscow center is key. Here we created our main product – Parallels Desktop (Windows on Mac). Later, some of our employees expressed a desire to move to Europe. We didn't mind expanding in this direction and partially moved the developers to Tallinn.
How did you come from Desktop to Access?
After the success of Parallels Desktop, we thought about where to develop further. Parallels Access was born. After its appearance, many spoke with admiration, “you are very comfortable”, “you are ahead of the planet unlike other remote access clients” and so on. But immediately we were faced with a bunch of questions from business users about how to get 'all the same, but from the' server '. Many people asked, is it possible to build our functionality into corporate Citrix, Microsoft RDP? We thought, appreciated and realized that it would take too long to write the server version. Next, we very quickly found a Maltese 2X team, which essentially made their own 'mini-Citrix'. Parallels bought them and they became our development center in Malta. Later, we replaced their mobile clients with ours and now we have a simpler and more affordable solution for remote work in a corporate environment via mobile devices than Citrix.
In general, the success of Parallels Desktop is largely due to the simplicity and convenience of our solution. We presented our product on the world market and for almost two years we were one of a kind. Later, the huge corporation VMware entered the fight with their Fusion product, with a bunch of resources, funds for marketing, promotion, sales and so on. For several years they tried to oust us from the market. Did not work out. We held out, won and continued to work on our solution, making it even more convenient. At the same time, a rethinking of the concept of virtualization came to us. The same VMware convinced everyone that virtual machines are something where everything is completely isolated. You can run their solution on one piece of hardware in the required amount, thereby increasing the efficiency of the resources used. We, in turn, came to a different understanding of the value for the end user. By and large, people do not care what is installed on the computer Windows or not, they need programs – Word, 1C, CorelDraw. We realized that we didn't need to separate platforms. Thus, we tried to integrate them as much as possible into each other. This is how our Coherence technology was born, allowing you to add Mac functions to Windows and vice versa. For example, after the release of Cortana from Microsoft, everyone was delighted with the new 'software', and we added support for it on the Mac and showed everyone how Cortana can work on it. Accordingly, we subsequently began to adhere to the same principle in Access: simple, easy and convenient. The same can be said for the Remote Application Server. Despite the fact that initially this product is focused on b2b, modern 'admins' are essentially the same advanced users, so the easier and faster your installation, the better. The business no longer needs to have an expensive Citrix Certified Professional, five minutes, a few simple steps and you can get going.
Are your products friendly with the Cloud?
Yes, we are actively playing with the now fashionable 'Cloud'. At the same time, I note that many of the third-party web solutions currently available are very limited in functionality. For our part, thanks to our Parallels Remote Application Server solution, we offer business users full and efficient work with their Windows – applications hosted on corporate servers. For example, even such a phone (pointing to my smartphone) will be enough for you on a trip to work with a system of any complexity.
We work closely with Microsoft and are exclusively sold in Russian Azure. This is the very real “Cloud”, which is actively used in small and medium-sized businesses and which, it seems to me, will exist for at least another five to ten years. Now the channels are already fast enough and you no longer notice the difference in working with a PC or in the 'Cloud'. Of course, the experience on mobile devices will be different, but if you have any PC or just a terminal with a screen, mouse and keyboard at hand, then the work will be the same, now Internet access speeds allow it.
That is, in fact, the limitation is in terms of the functionality of the gadget on which the product is running?
It's not even about functionality, but about convenience in general. Let's say you work with 1C in the office on a full-fledged PC. At this time, the application is 'spinning' somewhere on the server. Suddenly you needed to leave urgently. So, during a trip or from home, you can remotely open any document on your computer from a tablet or smartphone and continue to work with it, and from the place where you left off. It doesn't matter if it's on the subway or at the stadium, you just need internet and a connected device. Even if you lose your tablet or smartphone, nothing will happen, all your data will remain on the server. This is how everyone will work soon. I think that for another five to ten years from a business point of view, we will be tied to Windows. Undoubtedly, after some time, a larger-scale transition to the 'Cloud' will take place.
The question is based on the subject of our resource. Recently it was reported that the user base Android surpassed that of Windows. What is the ratio in terms of your product user base between iOS and Android?
If we talk about Parallels Access, then, as far as I remember, there is parity. Remote Application Server users have Android ahead. Let me explain: among our clients there are many small and medium-sized businesses, not huge corporations. They all count money very carefully. Why would they buy iPad if they can take any device for Android for almost four times less? When organizing remote access to corporate server infrastructure, this does not affect performance, so why pay more? For everyday tasks, a $ 150 tablet will suffice, on which our application will work as well, without problems, as on iPad. Thus, from the point of view of b2b it is more popular Android, parity is maintained for b2c.
To be honest, I'm surprised that the business has so much interest in Android. But what about all the hype around an 'infected OS' with 'viruses everywhere'? How do you defend yourself?
We have been actively and successfully cooperating with Kaspersky Lab for a long time.
What are the current challenges facing the company in the context of the market situation, new technologies?
Our main challenge now is to beat Citrix in the field of corporate remote access. It is a large corporation with serious resources. But we have good experience. At one time, we managed to defeat VMware, despite the fact that they really wanted to 'kill' us.
Was it a fair fight?
Well look, for example, at first they tried to prove to everyone that they provide a 'proven' product, proven services, and after five years of fighting with us, they began to write 'Engineered in the USA' on their products, and on on all the thematic sites, mentions began to appear that Parallels is some kind of work of Russian hackers and should not be used. Do you think this is a fair fight?
Since we have touched on current trends, a question from our reader: how many retweets per subscription to Parallels?
Let's discuss (laughs). It so happened that we spend practically nothing on PR and advertising. The Western market has a slightly different structure, where journalists have sufficient funds and, on the contrary, are ready to literally fight for the material themselves. For example, Access was twice filmed on video by one of the top Western authors, David Pogue, who first was a leading journalist for the New York Times, then moved to Yahoo. That is, they didn't pay anything, but it turned out great.
From a series of our offtopic questions, we are interested in what gadgets do you use on an ongoing basis?
As you can see, I have two phones, one on Android, the other on iOS (SGS7, iPhone 6), used HTC M8 and Sony Z5. I really liked the latter, but apparently because of the waterproofness, when talking on the phone, everyone hears what your interlocutor is talking about, the speaker is very loud. At home, there are tablets on the mentioned OS, so as not to be limited to one. iPhone more for personal use, because the S7 does not hold the battery well. The S6 could not be used at all for this reason. And it is in such seemingly little things that the attitude to the gadget lies. Also, from gadgets I constantly wear watches, but they are for triathlon, I am actively involved in jogging. The Paris marathon ran last week.
What do you think about Smart Home and Internet of Things?
All this is working very poorly so far. I brought a 'smart' thermostat from the States, connected everything, but it turned out that our time zone cannot be set in the application. Only American cities are on the menu. I tried to find a more or less suitable and climate-similar city in the USA, but you can't guess. They can have minus 20 degrees and a snow storm, while ours is 0 degrees. At the same time, the thermostat adjusts to the specified city and sets a not very comfortable temperature at home. So, perhaps, apart from the gate that automatically opens when my phone approaches, I do not use anything 'smart' on an ongoing basis. Although even in this case, there is no constancy: sometimes, when I'm at home, the phone decides to open the gate itself (laughs).
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As such, the logical conclusion of the interview is not expected, just a meeting, during which they talked about interesting topics. It's always nice to talk to people with a broad outlook, including in the field of high technology. I would like to thank the Parallels representatives for their time, it was great to sit so informally. I hope you found something interesting for yourself in this article. If you have any substantive questions, you can leave them in the comments, I think the company representatives will be happy to answer them. Have a nice week everyone, until Monday!