Introduction
Ingram Micro’s Cloud Marketplace core system upgrade to version 7.0 comes with many new features and improvements. Some of these changes impact our reseller partners directly in how they work with the Ingram Micro Cloud Marketplace. Others, will impact resellers indirectly. Meaning, as a user, the overall experience may improve because of the improvements to system performance and backend functionality.
1 New Features and Capabilities
1.1 Billing
1.1.1 New Domain SDK
In previous versions, a C++ based SDK was used. With this upgrade a new SDK will allow the plugins to be created and updated more easily and quickly by Ingram Micro.
- Plug-ins can now be developed in PHP, which is easier and requires less effort compared to C++.
- Both C++ and PHP-based SDKs are now supported.
- Development complexity has been significantly reduced as less knowledge of Odin Automation is required.
- New plug-ins can be more easily deployed.
Reseller Impact: Direct
1.1.2 New Payment SDK
In previous versions, C++ based SDK was used. With this upgrade a new SDK will allow the payment plug-ins to be created and updated more easily and quickly by Ingram Micro. Additionally, moving forward to the new payment SDK will mean that Ingram Micro will no longer store Credit Card information for payments received.
- Plug-ins can now be developed in PHP, which is easier and requires less effort compared to C++.
- Both C++ and PHP-based SDKs are now supported. Development complexity has been significantly reduced as little knowledge of Odin Automation is required.
- New plug-ins can be more easily deployed.
Reseller Impact: Direct
1.1.3 Online Validation of EU VAT Numbers via VIES
Ingram Micro is now able to automatically validate Tax Registration ID / VAT number for their EU customers through the online VAT Information Exchange System (VIES). An order placed by the customer with a black-listed Tax Reg ID (or the one missing in VIES) can be marked as fraudulent and will not be provisioned. This allows reducing the number of fraud orders.
Limitations: This validation is only effective within the Checking Orders after Placement filter (validation from the Online Store is not currently supported).
Reseller Impact: Direct
1.1.4 Persistent Contact Data in Documents
Previously, when an invoice was created with a reference to account for contact information, and if at any point in future the contact data changed and invoice was re-created, it contained "new" contact data.
With the upgrade, Ingram Micro will now be able to store the invoices in their original state - with unchanged details - to comply with European (and other regions') rules. Customer is able to download original versions of already issued invoices.
For better record keeping and compliance reasons, this ensures that when an account's contact information has changed, old invoices and documents previously generated will not get updated with the new contact information.
Reseller Impact: Direct
1.1.5 Credit Hold per Subscription
The logic of putting an account on credit hold has been extended. Now in case a customer has several subscriptions and misses payments related to one subscription, only that subscription will be suspended. Account is also put on hold, i.e. customer will not be able to manage his or her subscriptions. This gives more granular control over how a credit hold can be applied.
Reseller Impact: Direct
1.1.6 Weighting of Overdue Invoices Amount
To avoid the situation that an account is put on hold due to an overdue amount that is very small relative to overall account value, a new threshold "Underpayment limit" is added for the "Put account on credit hold" policy in credit terms. The debt of an account is calculated as percentage of total of unpaid invoices.
Reseller Impact: Direct
1.1.7 Daily Billing Process Performance
Daily Billing Process performance has increased twofold.
Reseller Impact: Direct
1.1.8 Paying with Available Credit
A customer is now able to apply his/her available credit when placing a new order or paying for outstanding invoices.
Reseller Impact: Direct
1.1.9 Fixed Costs for Resellers
This feature improves the billing process by allowing Ingram Micro to guarantee fixed costs to resellers on the recurring monthly fees for end-customer subscriptions to delegated service plans. A common use case is when the customer purchases from the reseller a subscription to the delegated service plan, and then the provider raises the subscription fees. Under the improved behavior, the changes will only apply to the subscription on its renewal date. For example:
- The provider delegates a service plan with recurring fees = $10 to their reseller.
- The reseller sets the recurring fees = $12 and sells the service plan to a customer.
- The customer pays $12 every month for the subscription.
- The provider changes the price to $13. As a result, the reseller has to change its price to $15 to be able to earn some profit. However, the change will be applied only to the future subscriptions, while for the existing subscriptions the monthly recurring fee remains $10 for the reseller and $12 for all existing customers until the subscription is renewed.
Reseller Impact: Direct
1.1.10 Multi-lined Memos
In previous versions of Ingram Micro created Credit/Debit memos with single lines only. So, if more than one service was provided during calculation period, Ingram Micro had to issue either a document with a single line for all services (with no details on each service) or separate Credit/Debit memos per service.
This update allows us to issue multi-lined memos. A multi-lined memo is a single document on several services with details per service credited/debited. If credits are provided for more than 1 reason, it can be split out to 2 or more lines and explained in more granular detail.
This will greatly help resellers to better understand the credits they get from Ingram Micro, and for resellers using the platform to bill, it will help them explain credits they give to their customers more accurately.
Reseller Impact: Direct
1.2 Online Store
1.2.1 City and State Fields Pre-filled from ZIP Code in the Online Store
During a sign-up procedure for O365 services on the checkout screen of the Online Store (Cloud Store), the City and State fields are now pre-filled automatically from entered ZIP code (US customers only). This makes the registration process easier for customers.
Reseller Impact: Direct
1.2.2 PHP 5.6.x Support for Online Store
The Online Store now runs on PHP 5.6.x. Using the new version of PHP reduces security risks (PHP 5.3 is not supported starting from 14 Aug 2014).
Reseller Impact: Indirect
1.3 Payment Plug-Ins
1.3.1 Docdata Payments Support
With the Docdata payment plug-in implemented (C++ implementation), providers are now able to process payments via Docdata payment gateway.
Reseller Impact: Direct
1.3.2 New Payment Plug-ins
New payment plug-ins implemented on a new PHP-based SDK are now available in Odin Automation billing:
- 1 PayPal (Standard and Express Checkout)
- 2 WorldPay
- SagePay (Protx)
- eWay
- Stripe
- Authorize.Net (CIM API)
- 2 Checkout
Reseller Impact: Direct
1.4 Core Systems
1.4.1 New Branding Implementation
In the previous version, branding required Linux/Windows/Linux_NG Shared Hosting module to be deployed in Odin Automation. With this upgrade, the following change makes branding easier to set up by Ingram Micro.
With this upgrade, a new branding implementation makes it independent from any type of shared hosting deployment. Brand creation wizard was simplified according to these changes. The new deployment model implies branding access point and UI on one node with installed RHEL/CentOS 6, 7.
Reseller Impact: Indirect
1.4.2 Email-based Login Format for Customer's Administrators and Users
With this upgrade, user email address is now used as a login name to access the Customer Control Panel (CCP) and Online Store, instead of the previously used username login format. This change is a result of the latest market tendency for a more user-oriented and unified approach. This new approach is supported for both CCPv1 and CCPv2 (future release) for the newly created users. Additionally, the default limitation for login field length is now extended from 20 to 254 characters, so that the field can accept longer user emails.
Reseller Impact: Direct
1.4.3 Simplified Localization of APS Applications
Ingram Micro can now edit APS locales without recompilation of the APS package. Namely, the following advantages:
- Localization packages may be prepared by ISV, localization teams or the provider
- It is possible to combine several localizations into a one package
- Ingram Micro can download localization template just from provider CP, then fill it in, and then upload back. The localization package will be created and installed.
Essentially this makes it easier for Ingram Micro to localize APS packages to other languages, thus decreasing overall time to market.
Reseller Impact: Indirect
1.4.4 Support of RHEL/CentOS 7 on Management Node
Additionally to RHEL/CentOS 6, Odin Automation Management Node can run on RHEL/CentOS 7. By adopting RHEL/CentOS 7 Ingram Micro now benefits from:
- Higher performance and stability with full industry support of security updates
- Use of modern tools for compilation of source code
- Foundation for product evolution in the future
- More information can be found at https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/7/html/7.2_Release_Notes/index.html
Reseller Impact: Indirect
1.5 Shared Hosting
1.5.1 Support of MySQL 5.6 in Shared Hosting NG
Some applications offered, such as WordPress and Joomla will soon require MySQL 5.6 as a minimum version. Starting from version 7.0, Odin Automation supports MySQL version 5.6. MySQL 5.6 is installed on RHEL/CentOS 7 and later as a new deployment.
Current installations with MySQL 5.5 and less are supported with new authentication logic for Service Nodes.
Reseller Impact: Indirect
1.6 Hosted Exchange
1.6.1 Support of Cumulative Update 13 for Exchange 2013 and Update Roll-up 14 for Exchange 2010
Starting from version 7.0, Odin Automation supports the following Exchange updates:
- Cumulative Update 13 for Exchange 2013
- Update Rollup 14 for Exchange 2010
Reseller Impact: Indirect
2 Cloud Infrastructure Improvements
2.1 VPS
2.1.1 Ability to Manage DNS Zone Synchronization between Odin Automation and Plesk
Ingram Micro can now enable and configure Plesk DNS zone synchronization via PCP and can set up the following:
- Automatic Plesk DNS zone propagation to Odin Automation for domains with the same name in Odin Automation and Plesk.
- Automatic creation of the respective domain and DNS zone in Odin Automation on new domain creation in Plesk.
In both cases above, DNS zone management is delegated to Plesk.
A customer will be able to manage Plesk DNS zone synchronization between Odin Automation and Plesk via CCP. The following options are available:
- Create DNS zone in Plesk
- Synchronize DNS zones
- Desynchronize DNS zones
2.1.2 Binding VPS to Domain
When a customer buys a VPS with domain via the online store or CCP, the respective DNS zone will be configured and a record will be added. PTR record will be automatically created, if the provider has the Reverse DNS zone configured.
Reseller Impact: Direct
2.1.3 Notifying Customers about Critical Issues Related to VPS
This upgrade is related to VPS services only. Customer will get the e-mail notification in case any long-running operation fails. The VPS owner will be aware of an issue even he/she is not logged in to the CCP.
E-mail notifications will be sent in the following cases:
- VPS creation failure
- VPS recreation failure
- VPS backup failure
- VPS restoration from backup failure
Reseller Impact: Direct
2.2 OACI
2.2.1 Internal Architectural OACI Improvement
The following architectural OACI improvements were implemented:
- Removing 3rd party protocol and switching to JMS, adding authentication functionality to provide more security in communication between software components.
- Relocating OACI component (vm2vf) from the Instance Manager to Virtuozzo nodes to increase interaction stability between the Instance Manager and Virtuozzo nodes.
In addition, Cloud Infrastructure module now supports CentOS 7.
Reseller Impact: Indirect
3 End of Life
3.1 Billing
3.1.1 'Wait asynchronous event notifications' Option
The "Wait asynchronous event notifications" option available at System > Settings > Operations Automation Integration, will be deprecated. That is, the default system behavior will be as if the "Wait asynchronous event notifications" option is enabled.
3.1.2 'Operations Automation API Version 5' Option
The "Select Operations Automation API" option available at System > Settings > Operations Automation Integration, will be deprecated after release of new version. Only API Version 6 protocol must be used.
3.2 Hosted Exchange
3.2.1 ActiveSync for Old Devices
ActiveSync auto-configuration for Windows Mobile 2003, 5.0, 6.0, Smartphones and Pocket PC is no longer supported since version 7.0.
3.2.2 Global Relay
Due to the outdated functionality and low demand, the Global Relay Email Archiving service will no longer be supported.
3.2.3 Platform
The Internet Explorer versions 8 and 9 will no longer be supported for control panels and online store.
4 Upcoming End of Life
4.1 VPS
4.1.1 VPS Hosting Module (non-OACI-based)
Starting from the next major release, installation of the VPS Hosting module (non-OACI-based) will not be shipped with Odin Automation. Upgraded installations with the already installed VPS Hosting module (non-OACI-based) are still supported. Upgraded installations with newly installed VPS Hosting module (non-OACI-based) are supported.
4.1.2 C++ SDK-based Payment Plug-ins
Starting with the next upgrade after June 30th 2017, payment plug-ins developed using C++ SDK will not be supported. Also, C++ SDK will be removed from that version of Odin Automation.
4.1.3 C++ SDK-based Domain Plug-ins
Starting with the next upgrade after June 30th 2017, domain plug-ins developed using C++ SDK will not be supported. Also, C++ SDK will be removed from that version of Odin Automation.