San Francisco - Parallels Desktop for Mac will be made available as part of the Microsoft Expression Professional Subscription.

The move means Mac users will be able to use Microsoft’s Expression Studio to design desktop and web-based graphical interfaces. The partnership strengthens the Parallels/Microsoft partnership by providing even deeper support for Microsoft Windows and Microsoft applications running in Parallels virtual machines.

Parallels Desktop for Mac enables users to run Windows on any Intel Mac. In excess of 1,000,000 copies of the software have been sold so far.

“Including Parallels Desktop for Mac in the Microsoft Expression Subscription gives designers a valuable tool for working across platforms,” said Serguei Beloussov, CEO of Parallels. “It is further evidence of the productivity benefits that our virtualization software offers customers, and strengthens our ongoing partnership with Microsoft.”

Wayne Smith, group product manager of Expression Studio at Microsoft said: “This combination opens up Microsoft software products to Mac-based designers, which will widen the options for those wanting to design for the Microsoft platform including Silverlight.”

The Microsoft Expression Professional Subscription will be available from Microsoft in June 2008 and will cost $999.

In addition to the Parallels Desktop for Mac software, the Expression Professional Subscription includes: Expression Studio; Visual Studio 2008 Standard; Office 2007 Standard; Windows XP SP2; Windows Vista Business Edition; Pre-configured virtualized server environments.

Macworld UK is an InfoWorld affiliate.

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