Parallels (company)

Parallels is a software company based in Bellevue, Washington. It is primarily involved in the development of virtualization software for MacOS. The company has over 800 employees and offices in 14 countries, including the United States, Germany, United Kingdom, France, Japan, China, Spain, Malta, Australia, and Mauritius

History
SWSoft, a privately held server automation and virtualization software company, developed software for running data centers, particularly for web-hosting service companies and application service providers. Their Virtuozzo product was an early system-level server virtualization and, in 2003, they bought Plesk, a commercial web hosting platform.

In 2004, SWSoft acquired Parallels, Inc. Parallels Workstation for Windows and Linux 2.0 was released in the same year, with Parallels Desktop for Mac following in mid-2006. SWSoft's acquisition of Parallels was kept confidential until January 2004. Later the same year, the corporate headquarters moved from Herndon, Virginia, to Renton, Washington. Historically, their primary development labs were in Moscow and Novosibirsk, Russia. Parallels was founded by Serg Bell, who was born in the former Soviet Union and later immigrated to Singapore.

At Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference 2007 in San Francisco, California, Parallels announced and demonstrated its upcoming Parallels Server for Mac. Parallels Server for Mac allows IT managers to run multiple server operating systems on a single Mac Xserve.

In 2007, the German company Netsys GmbH sued Parallels' German distributor Avanquest for copyright violation. Parallels Server for Mac was announced at WWDC, and later Parallels Technology Network.

In 2008, SWSoft merged with Parallels to become one company under the Parallels branding, which then acquired ModernGigabyte, LLC. Parallels Server for Mac was launched in June, then in September Parallels Desktop 4 for Windows and Linux, a rename of Parallels Workstation for the 4.0 release, and Parallels Desktop 4.0 for Mac later that year. In the next version, 6.0, the Windows and Linux software became known as Parallels Workstation again.

Over the next three years, the company launched Parallels Desktop 5 for Mac, Parallels Desktop 6 for Mac, Parallels Server for Mac 4.0 Mac mini Edition, Parallels Transporter, Parallels Workstation 6 Extreme, Parallels Desktop 7 for Mac, Parallels Mobile for iOS, and Parallels Workstation 6.

During 2012, 2013 and 2014, the company discontinued Parallels Server for Mac, Windows and Linux, launched Parallels Desktop 8 for Mac and Mac Management for Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager, and released Parallels Desktop 10 for Mac.

Parallels acquired 2X Software in February 2015, rebranded their service provider business to Odin, later sold the Odin Service Automation Platform to Ingram Micro. They also released Parallels Mac Management v4.0 for Microsoft SCCM and Parallels Desktop 11 for Mac.

In 2017, Virtuozzo and Plesk, two products from the pre-Parallels history of SWSoft, were spun out.

In December 2018, Corel announced that it had acquired Parallels.

On October 20, 2020, it was announced that Google had partnered with Parallels to bring full-featured Windows applications to enterprises and cloud workers using Chrome Enterprise.

On February 17, 2023, Microsoft announced its partnership with Parallels Desktop 18 to bring Windows 11 support to M-Series Macs.

Products

 * Parallels Desktop for Mac – an x86 and ARM virtualization platform for macOS.
 * Parallels RAS – an application virtualization program allowing Windows applications to be accessed via individual devices from a shared server or cloud system.
 * Parallels Toolbox – a productivity suite for Windows and macOS.
 * Parallels Access – was a remote desktop platform allowing iOS and Android devices to connect to Windows and macOS devices, which was sunset on April 30, 2024.
 * Parallels Desktop for ChromeOS – a Windows virtualization platform for ChromeOS.