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Microsoft and Parallels today announced to invest up to US$5 million in a joint delivery of a cloud automation solution for the healthcare industry.

Under the Parallels and Microsoft Health Community Cloud Automation Partnership, large healthcare institutions will be able to create private, public and hybrid cloud networks for "immediate access to critical information" by key stakeholders such as doctors, administrators and insurance providers at all times.

The US$5 million investment will be used for product development, professional services, and joint sales and marketing.

As a part of the Health Community Cloud Automation (HCCA) solution, the key Parallels solutions will leverage Microsoft Cloud Services to deliver private cloud networks to help users meet the security and compliance needs of the healthcare industry such as HIPAA in the US.

HIPAA is a security rule established by the US Department of Health and Human Services to lay down the national standards to protect individuals' electronic personal health information that is created, received, used, or maintained by a covered entity.

The HCCA solution is expected to help healthcare organizations move from traditional IT models to private, community and hybrid cloud models on Microsoft's cloud optimized data center for health offering and Parallels Automation. The solution will extend to the desktop with Microsoft-based virtual desktop interface.

According to IDC's Program Vice President of Storage Software Laura DuBois, "Cloud-based solutions can bring quantifiable raw cost savings, as well as a number of strategic benefits for the betterment of the company in a much broader sense. These include operational cost, cost restructuring, competency alignment, risk management, rapid scalability, and deployment benefits."

"Today, 41.8% of a healthcare organization's IT budget is allocated in a traditional IT deployment, whereas in two years' time this will decrease to 35.4%, a decline of six percentage points. With this change comes an increase in the percentage of the overall IT budget allocated to private and public cloud. For infrastructure suppliers, this signals a very real change in how firms will procure services and solutions in 2013," DuBois added.