Parallels is a software company based in

Bellevue, Washington Bellevue ( ) is a city in the Eastside region of King County, Washington, United States, located across Lake Washington from Seattle. It is the third-largest city in the Seattle metropolitan area and has variously been characterized as ...

; it is primarily involved in the development of

virtualization In computing, virtualization or virtualisation (sometimes abbreviated v12n, a numeronym) is the act of creating a virtual (rather than actual) version of something at the same abstraction level, including virtual computer hardware platforms, stor ...

software for

macOS macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lapt ...

. The company has offices in 14 countries, including The

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the European mainland, continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its metropolitan area ...

, Japan, China,

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Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-eig ...

, Australia and

Mauritius Mauritius ( ; french: Maurice, link=no ; mfe, label= Mauritian Creole, Moris ), officially the Republic of Mauritius, is an island nation in the Indian Ocean about off the southeast coast of the African continent, east of Madagascar. It ...

and has over 800 employees.

Company history

SWSoft SWsoft was a privately held server automation and virtualization software company and the parent company of Parallels. SWsoft developed software for running data centers, particularly for web-hosting services companies, application service prov ...

, a privately held server automation and virtualization software company, developed software for running data centers, particularly for web-hosting services companies and application service providers. Their

Virtuozzo Virtuozzo is a software company that develops virtualization and cloud management software for cloud computing providers, managed services providers and internet hosting service providers. The company’s software enables service providers to offe ...

product was an early system-level server virtualization solution, and in 2003 they bought

Plesk Plesk is a commercial web hosting and server data center automation software developed for Linux and Windows-based retail hosting service providers. It was developed by Plesk International GmbH, with headquarters in Toronto, Canada and Sch ...

, a commercial

web hosting A web hosting service is a type of Internet hosting service that hosts websites for clients, i.e. it offers the facilities required for them to create and maintain a site and makes it accessible on the World Wide Web. Companies providing we ...

platform. In 2004, SWsoft acquired Parallels, Inc. and Parallels Workstation for Windows and Linux 2.0 was released, with Parallels Desktop for Mac following in mid-2006. SWsoft's acquisition of Parallels was more or less kept under wraps until January 2004, two years before Parallels became mainstream. Later the same year the corporate headquarters moved from Herndon, Virginia to Renton, Washington. At Apple's

Worldwide Developers Conference The Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) is an information technology conference held annually by Apple Inc. The conference is usually held at Apple Park in California. The event is usually used to showcase new software and technologies in t ...

2007 in San Francisco, California, Parallels announced and demonstrated its upcoming Parallels Server for Mac. Parallels Server for Mac will reportedly allow 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 (see

Parallels Desktop for Mac Parallels Desktop for Mac is software providing hardware virtualization for Macintosh computers with Intel processors, and since version 16.5 also for Apple silicon-based Macintosh computers. It is developed by Parallels, since 2018 a subsidiary ...

for details), then Parallels Server for Mac was announced at

WWDC The Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) is an information technology conference held annually by Apple Inc. The conference is usually held at Apple Park in California. The event is usually used to showcase new software and technologies in t ...

, and later Parallels Technology Network. In 2008, SWsoft merged into Parallels to become one company under the Parallels brandingDavid Marshall (Jan 29, 2008) [08:03 PM
InfoWorld Virtualization Report David Marshall InfoWorld Parallels Announces Virtuozzo Containers 4.0
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 for Mac#Version 4.0, Parallels Desktop 4.0 for Mac later that year. From 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 for Mac#Version 5, 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 iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also include ...

, 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 Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager, formerly System Center Configuration Manager and Systems Management Server (SMS) is a systems management software product developed by Microsoft for managing large groups of computers providing remote con ...

. and released Parallels Desktop 10 for Mac. Parallels acquired 2X Software in February 2015, rebranded their service provider business to Odin, later selling the Odin Service Automation Platform to

Ingram Micro Ingram Micro is an American distributor of information technology products and services. The company is based in Irvine, California, U.S. and has operations around the world. History Ingram Micro's origins trace back to the founding of distrib ...

. They also released Parallels Mac Management v4.0 for Microsoft SCCM and Parallels Desktop 11 for Mac. In 2017,

and

, two products from the pre-Parallels history of SWsoft, were spun out. In December 2018,

Corel Cascade Parent Limited, doing business as Alludo (pronounced like "all you do"), is a Canadian software company headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario, specializing in graphics processing. Formerly called the Corel Corporation ( ; from the abbreviatio ...

announced that it had acquired Parallels. On October 20, 2020 it was announced that Google have partnered to bring full-featured Windows applications to enterprises and cloud workers using Chrome Enterprise. "Chrome OS is increasingly being chosen by modern enterprises, either for remote work, hybrid, or in the office," said John Solomon, Vice President of ChromeOS at Google, "We are thrilled to partner with Parallels to bring legacy and full-featured Windows applications support, through Parallels Desktop for Chromebook Enterprise, to help businesses easily transition to cloud-first devices and workflows."

Current products

– an x86 and ARM virtualization platform for

. * Parallels RAS – an

application virtualization Application virtualization is a software technology that encapsulates computer programs from the underlying operating system on which they are executed. A fully virtualized application is not installed in the traditional sense, although it is sti ...

program allowing

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ser ...

applications to be accessed via individual devices from a shared

server Server may refer to: Computing *Server (computing), a computer program or a device that provides functionality for other programs or devices, called clients Role * Waiting staff, those who work at a restaurant or a bar attending customers and su ...

or cloud system * Parallels Toolbox – a

productivity suite Productivity software (also called personal productivity software or office productivity software) is application software used for producing information (such as documents, presentations, worksheets, databases, charts, graphs, digital painting ...

for Windows and macOS * Parallels Access – a

remote desktop In computing, the term remote desktop refers to a software- or operating system feature that allows a personal computer's desktop environment to be run remotely off of one system (usually a PC, but the concept applies equally to a server or a ...

platform allowing

and Android devices to connect to Windows and macOS devices. * Parallels Desktop for ChromeOS—a Windows virtualization platform for

ChromeOS ChromeOS, sometimes stylized as chromeOS and formerly styled as Chrome OS, is a Linux-based operating system designed by Google. It is derived from the open-source ChromiumOS and uses the Google Chrome web browser as its principal user interfa ...

References

{{Reflist, 2 Software companies established in 1999 Software companies based in Washington (state) Companies based in Bellevue, Washington Virtualization software 2018 mergers and acquisitions Corel American subsidiaries of foreign companies Software companies of the United States 1999 establishments in Washington (state)