Conetix Partners With Parallels Plesk 12 - Case Study

Established in 2000, Freom Pty Ltd is a web design and hosting company with customers ranging from small and medium enterprises to large multinational corporations in Australia. Through its hosting packages, it provides businesses with the storage and email accounts needed to create a professional Internet presence. For customers with more unique requirements, Freom also provides them with the flexibility to create their own packages.

Business Challenge                   

As a web hosting company, Freom places great importance on the security of its customers’ web assets. In particular, it wanted to make sure that its clients’ systems were protected from spam mail and other online threats.                  

Freom also faced the challenge of managing different products within its hosting environment. For example, its customers were using various versions and brands of control panels, which required different skillsets and significant effort to configure and maintain. Furthermore, many of its customers were beginning to use WordPress to manage their website content, so Freom had to find a way to help them manage WordPress more efficiently and securely as well.

Solution                  

To address these issues, Conetix introduced Freom to their new Plesk 12 solution offer designed for web agencies. Conetix is an Australian service provider focused on delivering enterprise grade solutions ranging from web hosting to advanced application and desktop delivery. It has also been a Parallels partner for over                   

10 years. As a Conetix reseller, Freom was able to tap into Conetix’s expertise in Parallels products and gain better insights into Parallels’ capabilities.                    

The Solution for Web Professionals includes a powerful set of website management tools, which includes an enhanced security core that allows service providers and

web agencies to secure their infrastructure while reducing support costs. It integrates web application firewall capabilities with a service that scans log files and bans IP addresses that exhibit malicious behaviour. These are combined with outbound antispam and server hardening tools to deliver server-to-site protection out-of-the-box.

In addition to these, Parallels Plesk includes a next-generation content distribution network (CDN), powered by CloudFlare, which brings content closer and faster to web site visitors. The Web Pro and Web Host editions of the new Parallels Plesk 12 also come with a WordPress Toolkit that simplifies the daily tasks required to manage and secure WordPress sites.  After evaluating Contetix solution offer with Parallels Plesk and comparing its capabilities with other offerings in the market, Freom decided to standardize on the use of Parallels Plesk for all of their web hosting clients.          

“Since partnering with Conetix doing business has become a much more seamless process. We are now able to effortlessly integrate all our clients into the one offering resulting in consistency across the board.”  — Rick Jewson, Owner, Freom Pty Ltd 

Benefits                   

With the latest version of Parallels Plesk 12, Freom has been able to address the security and management issues that concern many web hosters and deliver these capabilities to its customers as well. Through its partnership with Conetix, it has also been able to leverage the latter’s deployment of Parallels’ infrastructure and automation solutions to deliver greater reliability, high service availability and more proactive customer support.                            

Peace of mind with enhanced security                    

Parallels Plesk gives Freom and its customers “real peace of mind” by resolving spam mail and other security issues. With the new Plesk security core, outgoing spam protection ensures cleaner IP addresses and prevents its customers’ servers from being blacklisted. The security core also protects Freom and its customers against persistent attacks targeting known or newly-discovered vulnerabilities, and helps increase uptime as malicious attacks against servers are automatically blocked in real time.                    

Simplified system management                   

With the new Parallels Plesk, Freom’s customers now get a simplified view of their systems, enabling them to manage their web environment without the need for technical skills. It also gives them the flexibility to configure and manage many of the regular features that they need. For example, they are able to set up email accounts for their employees without having to turn to their service provider. This, in turn, frees up Freom to focus its attention on more critical customer issues.                    

Simplified WordPress management                   

By simplifying the daily tasks required to manage and secure WordPress sites, Parallels Plesk also reduces the time and effort required for system administration and enables Freom’s customers to focus on their core business. The WordPress Toolkit provides web site owners with a single point of entry to manage multiple WordPress installations, plugins and themes and enables them to secure the system easily by applying the most common recommended security settings.                    

Improved performance

The integration of a next-generation CDN also enables Parallels Plesk to deliver faster site performance and bandwidth savings. The CDN brings content closer and faster to visitors, enabling web sites to load twice as fast on average and saving end users up to 60% in bandwidth, without requiring any configuration or additional setup.                    

High availability and reliability                  

Backed by Conetix’s implementation of Parallels Cloud Server and Parallels Cloud Storage, Freom is also able to provide its customers with a highly-reliable infrastructure. The Parallels cloud platform enables applications to be migrated instantly to a working physical server if the original physical server becomes unavailable. In the same way, if the hard drive in a server fails, the applications on that server can continue to operate using data replicated on other hard drives in the storage cluster, thus ensuring high service availability.                    

Proactive support                    

Proactive support from Conetix has played an important role in helping Freom to reach out successfully to new customers. For example, using Parallels Business Automation, Conetix is able to quickly spin up new virtual private servers which Freom can then offer to its clients for a free trial, boosting the opportunity to close a deal.