Russian entrepreneur controls a dormant virtualization giant

What Acronis, Parallels and SWsoft have in common?

The three companies fund part or the whole business in virtualization market:

But this is not the only thing they have in common: while at the moment all firms are separated entities, are all financed by the S&W Group, an holding founded by Serguei Beloussov.

The russian entrepreneur is the CEO of SWsoft, covering the same role for Acronis until October 2005, while his name doesn’t appear in direct relationship with Parallels.

This tight connection, mostly for the Parallels part, has never been advertised even if Acronis and SWsoft already arranged a partnership in 2004 (note that in the annoucement Mr. Beloussov didn’t figure as the CEO of both companies).

The question is if and when Acronis, Parallels and SWsoft will merge together to launch a multi-form virtualization offering like the one Microsoft is building.