Parallels has officially kicked off the first round of beta testing for its long awaited Parallels Server product. For those of you interested in participating in this beta, you'll have to wait for now. Parallels has kicked off Beta 1 to a small contingent of their most trusted, active beta testers -- the so-called hard-core Parallels supporters who have continued to play an important role in helping the company Parallels has officially kicked off the first round of beta testing for its long awaited Parallels Server product. For those of you interested in participating in this beta, you’ll have to wait for now. Parallels has kicked off Beta 1 to a small contingent of their most trusted, active beta testers — the so-called hard-core Parallels supporters who have continued to play an important role in helping the company progress forward with their Workstation and Desktop products. Once these users provide Parallels with their feedback, the company will be ready to release Beta 2 to the general public. Although no time frame was given, based on past experience with the company, you can bet that it won’t be long. In typical Parallels fashion, expect that the quality and speed of their initial set of testing to conclude sometime within the next few weeks. When asked about what type of people or companies they were looking for to participate in the Beta 2 round, Benjamin Rudolph, Director of Corporate Communications at Parallels, said, “We’re looking for companies large and small to participate in the beta process. The broader the scope of beta tester, the more complete feedback we’ll get, which means that we’ll be able to modify and perfect the product faster.” He continued, “As with all Parallels products, our users are key to getting a great product out the door on time. One of the biggest reasons we’re successful is that we have a fiercely loyal user base helping us ready new products like this one.”Rudolph said that the product is looking very strong as it goes through its initial beta period. The Parallels Server product is currently offering enterprise features such as SMP, x64 support and scriptable, open APIs. The server class product is going to offer support for Windows, Linux and Apple Mac OSes. The support of Mac OS X on the new server platform should prove to be a big selling point for Parallels, as the company continues to impress Mac users with their Desktop for Mac virtualization product. And remember, it was only a few months ago that Apple made an unexpected change in its licensing agreement, stating in its Permitted License Uses and Restrictions: A. Mac OS X Server Software. This License allows you to install and use one copy of the Mac OS X Server software (the “Mac OS X Server Software”) on a single Apple-labeled computer. You may also Install and use other copies of Mac OS X Server Software on the same Apple-labeled computer, provided that you acquire an individual and valid license from Apple for each of these other copies of Mac OS X Server Software. Apple consumers look to be an obvious market for Parallels to continue their virtualization quest. And with the new Parallels Server product, they will also go after the SME and department enterprise space. However, the company doesn’t plan to stop there as it has a much larger view in mind, specifically, their “Optimized Computing” vision.According to Rudolph, Parallels expects to get the server product out the door in the next few months. He added, “Beyond that, though, this is a big step forward to achieving our goal of ‘Optimized Computing,’ in which we believe that through a well thought out deployment of virtualization, management and automation, companies large and small can optimize their business from desktop to datacenter. Having a hypervisor-powered server virtualization product that couples (and will work seamlessly with) our Virtuozzo container-based virtualization solution, and that compliments our desktop virtualization solutions, is a big part of making that happen.” Software Development