Parallels Summit 2009

This year’s Parallels Summit kicked off at the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada. This year’s Summit built upon as well as surpassed last year’s attendance records.

More than 1,000 attended this year’s Summit hailing from more than 60 countries. The amount of software vendors increased five-fold from 2008, with slightly more than 100 ISVs represented. Compared to 2008, the amount of attendees doubled and the amount of conference sessions increased by thirteen sessions.

Officially, the Summit did not start until Tuesday, February 3rd, but Monday was filled with plenty of events. Monday was called Day 0 by event organizers and started off with a Golf Tournament at Primm Valley Golf Club. Later in the evening, was a networking reception at eyecandy sound lounge in the lobby of the Mandalay Bay. The club was packed and as long as Microsoft and Intel were picking up the check, the bulk of attendees were located at the bar. In two hours time, conference goers built up a bar tab well over $5,000.

Day 1 started with a whirlwind three-speaker set: John Eng, VP Marketing, Service Provider Division, Parallels; Serguei Beloussou, CEO, Parallels; and Morris Miller, Founder of Rackspace and Sequel Ventures, LLC. The big topic of this year’s Summit was Cloud Computing and what it means for the Web Host industry. So much so, that fifteen conference sessions discussed computing with the Cloud.

Day 1 ended on the 64th floor of the Mandalay Bay, at a lounge called Mix. The lounge gave a breath taking view of the Vegas skyline with drinks and food lubricating the gears of industry.

Wednesday Day 2, began much like Day 1, breakfast then three speakers. The theme of Cloud Computing continued with such topics as “Blue Skies? Clearing the Air on Cloud Computing and SaaS,” “How We Will REALLY Move to the Cloud: the Coming Partnerships Between Hosters and Cloud Platform Providers,” and “Cloud Commerce – How Providers Enable Their Business Customers to Benefit From Cloud Computing Trends.”

Along with speeches and the conference sessions, the exhibit hall was much larger this time around. The size of the room allowed for more exhibitors and more space between booths allowing for greater foot traffic. In the back of the exhibit hall, Parallels’ Hands-On Lab was held for the second straight year. With its close vicinity to the session areas and several networking lounges, the amount of traffic that flowed through the exhibit hall greatly increased over last years.

This year’s Summit also included many schools and universities in attendance. Some showed up to cut costs (there even was a specific conference session on this called Virtualization Super Story: Oregon City School District Cuts IT Budget 60%) while others came in order to look for software and hardware for their IT classes.

As of this writing, the location for next year’s Summit is up in the air. Possible cities include New York, Las Vegas, San Francisco, Miami, and Washington, DC.