It did some things well, enough so that I and others wrote about it in industry trade rags. Yet, over the years, it has turned into one of those pieces of software that puts out a new full numeral release for functions that other virtual machines (including the grandaddy of virtual, VMWare) released as point updates.
Consider, then, Parallels 5, which in its fifth reincarnation has now finally matched features that VMWare's Fusion has incorporated since its second version.
For instance, Parallels touts its "Crystal View" feature "which makes Windows completely disappear." If you think you've heard this before, you have: it's what VMWare Fusion calls the Unity mode.
In fact, of the top nine features noted on the website's main page, none of them are unique to Parallels. In other words, all of them have been part of shipping copies of Fusion for some time now.
Don't get me wrong: Parallels is not a bad program. I use both it and Fusion, and recommend each frequently to clients.
Parallels marketing has been suspect for quote some time, starting back in early 2007, when Ben Rudolph, Parallels' marketing director, revealed in an oddly worded email and his blog wasn't the startup he'd wanted us to believe, but actually part of a much larger organization.
The secretive approach wasn't lost on those out in the world of virtualization, as one poster to his blog noted, "I saw this announcement a few days ago both here and on various other Web sites and I thought it was presented strangely overall, as though some secret being revealed was the most compelling part of the story."
Perhaps that strangeness was the sound of thousands of users wondering what was up, especially when the CEO of sister company SWSoft, Serguei Beloussov, presented another person as the Parallels CEO immediately after a Fortune blog post said Beloussov called the shots.
That at least has been corrected in the recent press release, which now identifies Beloussov as the Parallels CEO, and Ben Rudolph went off to the really fun challenge of marketing Vista in mid-2008.
But there continue to be unsubstantiated marketing claims, such as speed benefits with no backing data (and no URLs in the online press release), as well as the odd decision to call out features that are not unique to the company.
Maybe they need Ben back, so that the company can work to get ahead of the curve, as it once was, rather than putting out press releases and charging significantly for updates that only bring the Parallels product to status quo.
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