Ben Reuss, OpenSRS

We are delighted to be once again sponsoring the Parallels EMEA Partner Forum after a very successful and fun show last year. We are hoping you can join us this year. Ben Reuss, our Business Development Manager (EMEA) will be in each city and looks forward to greeting you.

The Parallels EMEA Partner Forum takes place in six locations across Europe from October 12-28. It is great opportunity to learn how to leverage Parallels technology to enable new Cloud Services, and how to become a “one-stop” shop for customers.  These are all one-day events followed by a networking cocktail hour.

Here are the cities and dates:

• Munich (October 12)
• Amsterdam (October 14)
• Madrid (October 19)
• Warsaw (October 21)
• Paris (October 26)
• London (October 28)

Registration for this event is free, so come out and say hi. Visit our events page to learn more or to register.

The picture of Ben (above) is from one of the events last year and is courtesy of the WHIR. You can also check out some of our photos on the OpenSRS Flickr stream.

Marco’s love of Rugby serves a dual purpose: the games and practices are a great way to deal with the pressure of managing our OpenSRS EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa) region while simultaneously supporting the local sporting community.

The connection between Rugby and OpenSRS

Another interesting link between Rugby and OpenSRS is the term “Scrum”. As you may have seen us mention a few times on the blog and in the forums, OpenSRS uses a variant of Agile development called “Scrum” as our software development process.

How are they doing?

As of last week, Gateshead RFC had just won a game (28-7), and last weekend there was a semi final cup game for the North-East National Title. That sounds pretty good to us!

We’ll be following up with Marco upon his return from WebhostingDay in Germany to get an update on the standings.

Can you spot Marco?

Some of you are well acquainted with our EMEA team and know Marco well. Just for fun: If you’re the first person to spot Marco in the team photo, we’ll send you one of our spiffy new OpenSRS sports tees. Just leave a comment below with Marco’s position in the team photo.

Please join us in wishing Marco and his team the best of luck this season!

Thanks to Gateshead RFC for the pictures.

The conference takes place at the beautiful Fountainebleau Miami Beach Resort. If you book soon, you can take advantage of the $279 hotel rate. Registration is free for our resellers.

If you are attending, we invite you to join Adam Eisner as he talks about “Act, Don’t React: An Insider’s Perspective On Key Emerging Hosting Trends.” Also stop by our booth to say hello, pick up some handy OpenSRS gear, and enter to win a Flip Video Recorder.

Learn more or register today

We are really excited about this conference and look forward to seeing some of you there.

Image courtesy of The WHIR

Last month we attended the cPanel Conference and we are happy to announce our prize winner. Congrats to Lenny from Codero for winning our iPod shuffle. This year’s conference was the biggest cPanel conference yet with over 180 attendee registrations and with folks traveling in from all over the world. It was a fun and educational environment, and a must-attend event for cPanel users! Thanks to the organizers for a great conference and also to everyone that stopped by our booth to say hello.

With another successful WHIR networking event taking place last week in Seattle, that wraps up our OpenSRS events schedule for the year. However, we are already busy planning for next year. I wanted to tell you about about a couple of exciting conferences that are coming up in the new year.

Parallels Summit 2010 – February 22-24

I don’t think you’ll be disappointed with the Parallels Summit 2010 new venue – the iconic Fontainebleau Miami Beach Resort. The Parallels Summit gives you a chance to meet industry peers and get inspired to build better Cloud Services based businesses. The Parallels Summit has become the premier conference for industry leaders to discuss how to drive innovation, create differentiated service offerings, and build businesses that profit from the Cloud.

The conference is free for Parallels’ partners, customers, invited guests, and other industry professionals. If you register before November 13, 2009 you’ll be entered to win your choice of an iPod Touch or Microsoft Zune HD.

WebhostingDay 2010 – March 17-19

WebhostingDay is the largest web hosting event in Europe and possibly the world. Last year they had 2,000 attendees.  It takes place in Phantasialand, an amusement park near Cologne, Germany. It offers a great mix of concentrated industry knowledge, networking events, and fun!  Check out some of our WebhostingDay 2009 coverage. We will have free conference passes, and we’ll let you know how to register with them in the coming months.

We are really hoping that some of you are planning to attend these conferences not only because they are some of the best in our industry, but also because there is nothing better than connecting with our resellers, partners and industry peers face-to-face. As we get closer to these events, we will keep you posted. Follow us on  twitter for event updates.

This year we had a group of fourteen OpenSRS folks attending and we were able to meet many resellers, prospects, partners, and industry leaders. We also launched our brand new sub-resellers program. Adam Eisner, our Director of Domain Services, presented “20 Ways to Outsmart Your Competitors.” Did you miss it? No problem. You can download Adam’s slides from our HostingCon follow-up page.

Announcing the winner of the Dell Adamo laptop!

As well, we are very pleased to announce the winner of our booth give-away! Congratulations to Eduardo from Hosting Panama the lucky winner of a really cool Dell Adamo laptop!

See you in Austin, Texas for HostingCon 2010 (or maybe sooner)

A special thanks to the team at iNet Interative for putting on a very well-organized and well-attended show. We look forward to seeing everyone next year in Austin for HostingCon 2010.  In the meantime we hope to see you again at one of our upcoming events:

• Parallels EMEA Roadshow – next stop in Paris on September 14
• WHIR Networking, Miami – September 24
• Cpanel Conference, Houston – October 5-7
• WHIR Networking, Washington DC – October 22

A couple of weeks ago we attended WebhostingDay in Germany, a unique and memorable trade show. The fact that it took place at Phantasialand, an amusement park, had a lot to do with it.  It was a well-attended event with 2,000 visitors from all over the world and 55 partner companies. The organizers did an excellent job balancing the agenda with business, networking, and fun events. Check out a previous post “The Fun Side of WebhostingDay” to see a video of some of the fun and action.

Thanks to everyone that stopped by our booth. We enjoyed the chance to meet and talk with you. Also, congratulations to James from Interspire the lucky winner of our prize draw for a Digital Radio!

Presentations from WebhostingDay are available on the website, along with a video and pictures from the show. Cruise on over to the WebhostingDay website to have a look.

Upcoming Events – WHIR Networking and HostingCon

Our next trade show is HostingCon which takes place in Washington DC from August 10-12. We are also continuing to sponsor the WHIR Web Hosting Industry Networking Events. These are free events, but you need to rsvp in advance. This is a great opportunity to meet us, enjoy some food and drinks, and network with other folks in the web hosting and domains space. Look for Solomon Amoako, our Director of Sales, at the Chicago event and say hello. Here is the upcoming schedule:

• Chicago – April 16
• New York – May 6
• Los Angeles – June 18
• Miami – Sept 24
• Washington, DC – Oct 22

If any of these events are in your area, please register and mark your calendars. We look forward to seeing you there.

Last week we attended Parallels Summit 2009 in Las Vegas. The conference was a two-day event that brought together service providers, industry and technology experts, media, and vendors. The over-arching theme was “cloud computing” and there were sessions on Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), automation, virtualization and other important topics.

Parallels will be posting some videos and presentations from the event, including Adam Eisner’s presentation on “Domain Names and Web Hosting in 2009 and Beyond”. We’ll let you know when it is ready. In the meantime you can see some conference coverage at theWHIR including a review of Adam’s presentation.

I thought it was a great opportunity for our team to network and meet face-to-face with many of our current and prospective resellers, as well as partners and other industry folks. We were very happy to meet some of you there and to get to know you and your businesses better. I’d like to thank everyone who took the time to meet with us or drop by our booth. On that note, I’d like to announce our booth prize winner. Congratulations to Steve from BlackSun on winning a Drobo!

Overall, we were very pleased with the event. We felt it was a well thought-out, organized, and attended event. We look forward to next year’s summit.

Next month, we are travelling to Germany to meet up with our EMEA team to sponsor WebhostingDay. We are excited to meet some of our resellers on the other side of the world. WebhostingDay takes place from March 18-20, 2009 and is the the largest web hosting event in Europe. If you are planning to attend, or interested in registering, please let us know.

Our team is heading to the Parallels Summit 2009 in Las Vegas at the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino from February 2 – 4th and we’d like to invite you to join us. This year’s theme is Cloud Computing and will include topics such as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Automation, and Virtualization. There will be lots of business leaders and other experts to give you insights on how to win against the big fish in the market.

We are a silver sponsor this year. Adam Eisner, our Product Manager for domain names, is presenting “Domain Names and Web Hosting in 2009 and Beyond.” Come and see his presentation, and swing by our booth to chat with us, and see what’s new. Other well known speakers include Morris Miller, founder of Rackspace; Andreas Gauger, former CEO of 1&1 Internet; Bernie Meyerson, VP Strategic Alliances and CTO Server Business at IBM; and several other industry veterans, experts, and leaders who will discuss technology developments shaping the industry.

The Parallels Summit is free and includes:
•    Great speakers
•    Fun Night Out Events
•    Hands-on Labs for Product Demonstrations
•    4 different session tracks: Industry, Service Provider, Enterprise IT, and Technology
•    Sponsored Meals
•    Did I mention it is in Las Vegas?

There are plenty of Las Vegas travel deals out there. You may be able to snag an air and hotel package from $400-600.

Learn more or register today! Please enter OpenSRS in the “referred by” section of the registration page when you register.

We hope to see you in Las Vegas!

Ken also shares some of the reason why we decided to reclaim OpenSRS as the name for our wholesale services. Ken explains that “reseller friendly” is not just a tag line; It is a value we have believed in for a long time.

What’s your opinion on some of the changes we have made recently? What would you like us to do more, do less, do differently? Also, what projects or products have you launched recently, or are thinking about doing in the future?

Stay tuned for two more videos that complete our series of six videos called Inside OpenSRS.

We’d like to hear from any of our resellers about their technical and network operations. What are some of the things that keep you up at night? And what do you (and your teams) do to relax when the pressure is off?

This is part of a series of six videos called Inside OpenSRS that features some of the people who work to provide high-quality services for our resellers. Stay tuned as we share the other videos with you over the next few weeks.