Parallels, the hosting and cloud services enablement leader, announced today that Cisco has made an equity investment in the company that supports joint go-to-market activities to deliver industry-leading cloud service delivery capabilities.

The investment is intended to strengthen inter-company collaboration towards accelerating customer adoption of Parallels cloud service delivery products with Cisco cloud and data center infrastructure solutions. As part of the investment, Parallels and Cisco also agreed to expand joint development, marketing and industry initiatives.

“Cisco is continuing its commitment to technology development and innovation through strategic investments,” said Hilton Romanski, Vice President, Corporate Business Development, Cisco. “In collaboration with Parallels, we are focused on offering a more efficient and easier-to-use cloud services delivery model for service providers. 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.”

“Parallels is committed to enabling our service provider customers to offer the most comprehensive, seamless and flexible set of cloud services for their SMB end-users,” said Birger Steen, CEO, Parallels. “By strengthening our collaboration with Cisco, Parallels is focused on accelerating its growth and offering an end-to-end solution for cloud service providers.”