Early last week, one of our board members, Serguei Beloussov, was named in the Financial Times as one of the top “25 Russians to watch.” The list of Russia’s top “movers and shakers” includes politicians, bankers and journalists; all people that have made an impact not only within their field but that have been recognized for going above and beyond.
Dr. Beloussov—yes, he also has a doctorate in Computer Science, not counting his Bachelors and Masters degrees in Physics—is a self-made entrepreneur that has founded a number of hugely successful tech companies, among them Acronis, Rolsen, Solomon Software SEA and Acumatica.
“It is an honor to be on this list, and a testament of how cloud computing, specifically cloud IT services for small businesses has become the leading force in the IT sector,” says Serguei.
Optimized Computing
Serguei is recognized within the fields of business and technology, and many people know him as the guy that founded Parallels. What you may not know is that Parallels is only one of many successful enterprises that he has been a part of. All of the companies that he has founded and helped mold have been products of his vision to provide “optimized computing.”
His vision for “optimized computing,” as he called, it started before he founded Parallels. Parallels was merely a vehicle for that vision. He saw computing moving towards automation, virtualization and minimization of cost: the cloud before it had the name “cloud.” In 1999 he started SWsoft (the precursor to Parallels) as an answer to the problems he saw with personal and server computing.
It wasn’t long before others began to catch the vision and wanted what Parallels was offering: for many years, Parallels was doubling their revenue year-to-year. The Cloud that we all know and use for everything wouldn’t be possible without automation and virtualization. Things like scaling, server fail-over, one-click installations and dynamic resource allocation wouldn’t be available without the kind of products Parallels was making in its early days.
The Cloud
One of the industries to most benefit from the move to automation and virtualization, as Serguei saw it, was the web hosting industry. Automation and virtualization are the basis behind the biggest moves in hosting, from dedicated servers to shared servers to virtual machines in the cloud. The “optimized computing” that Serguei foresaw and then his companies developed the answers to made it cost effective for web hosters to provide higher level service through full-automation of routine tasks—like server provisioning, scaling and assignment—and virtualization of the server.
The Cloud as we know it—the cloud made of up all the public and private clouds across the globe—is made of a network of automated and virtualized data centers. This cloud of hosters around the world is what makes of The Cloud.
13 years ago, Serguei saw the future of computing on the horizon and he created the company that helped bring that wave to the shore. That was in 1999. Today, Serguei serves on the board of our company, Jelastic, the company he sees as enabling the next wave of Cloud Computing. 2012 will be the year of the Platform-as-a- Service. The next step forward in computing is to lower the barrier to innovation. Jelastic is the answer to that problem.
The Next Wave
Jelastic allows developers to focus on building their applications, and not have to worry about buying servers, creating environments, configuring the OS, configuring the App Servers, configuring databases and then finally deploying code. Jelastic turns all these steps into a simple, one-click process. All the mundane things that waste time and money—like maintenance, configuration and upgrades—are automated in Jelastic.
Part of the next wave in Cloud Computing will be the elimination of lock-in that has been a problem with previous PaaS offerings. Jelastic is standard and doesn’t lock a developer into coding their App for the platform or having to change their code to change service providers. With Jelastic, developers can go between hosting service providers and not have to change their code, just upload and go!
The Financial Times gives Serguei credit for being “one of a number of entrepreneurs building bridges between Russia and Silicon Valley.” Part of that bridge is Jelastic. As one of board members, Sergeui is helping us define the next generation of Cloud Computing and PaaS. Currently, he is working full time at Runa Capital, an early stage VC fund that he founded.
“We are excited for Serguei and are glad that he is part of the Jelastic Team,” says Ruslan Synytsky, CEO, Jelastic. “We look forward to his continued success and recognition for his hard work. Jelastic is lucky to have him. We are excited about the future of computing and believe that Jelastic will help lead the way.”
The next wave in computing is starting now. Are you going to join in or watch from the sidelines? You can still try out Jelastic for free. With no lock-in and one-click installations, Jelastic has made Java Hosting so easy it's fun. Sign up for free today.