Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSCO), the world’s largest networking company, initiated a 1 percent equity investment in Parallels, a provider of hosting and cloud service enablement and desktop virtualization.
The networking giant’s investment is intended to strengthen its partnership with the company, and to speed up consumer adoption of Parallels cloud service delivery products with Cisco cloud and data center, infrastructure solutions.
Both companies agreed to expand joint projects, marketing, and industry initiatives, such as the development of go-to-market products. Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSCO) and Parallels target is to create industry-leading cloud service delivery capabilities.
In a statement, Hilton Romanski, vice president of corporate business development for Cisco Systems Inc (NASDAQ:CSCO), said Cisco is committed to progressing its technology development and innovation through strategic investments. According to him, the company’s collaboration with Parallels is focused on offering an efficient and easy-to-use cloud services delivery model for service providers.
Romanski said, “We are particularly excited about Parallels global presence — including its operations in Russia — which affords Cisco a continued opportunity to fuel innovation there and around the world.”
On the other hand, Birger Steen, chief executive officer of Parallels, said “Parallels is committed to enabling our service provider customers offer the most comprehensive, seamless and flexible set of cloud services for their SMB end-users by strengthening our collaboration with Cisco; Parallels is focused on accelerating its growth and offering an end-to-end solution for cloud service providers.”
Parallels is popular for its desktop virtualization software, which is used to run different operating systems and applications on computers, including Windows and Macs, without rebooting. The software competes with the virtualization products of Citrix Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:CTXS), VMware, Inc. (NYSE:VMW) and Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT).
Meanwhile, Cisco announced, today, that it would provide telemedicine technology for Albert Einstein Israelita Hospital in Brazil (HIAE). The company’s mobile health care telepresence endpoints were especially developed to allow health professional provide a wide range of medical services including remote consultations, virtual care, and medical education. The technology is equipped to provide high definition images and sounds
According to Dr. Milton Steinman, one of the project leaders of HIAE, the advantage of telemedicine is that it reduces tie and costs. Patients will no longer have to transfer to another hospital because it allows remote assessment. He said, “One of the great virtues of telemedicine is that it transfers knowledge live and online among medical professionals.”
