Ingram Micro cloud adds Azure and new hosting solutions to Odin Automation Essentials platform

Ingram Micro has announced that the newest release of cloud management software Odin Automation Essentials will include new capabilities for hosting service providers, including Microsoft Azure functionality, and will bring higher-margin services to the market faster and more cost-effectively.

Odin Automation Essentials helps providers build and deliver cloud and hosting service portfolios and manage cloud billing, provisioning, management and services integration. Ingram Micro acquired the intellectual property behind Odin from developer Parallels in December 2015.

The software solution, supported by Ingram Micro, aims to eliminate time-consuming provisioning, purchasing and delivery of cloud services to end-customers, factors which typically can take days or weeks of establishing contractual relationships to achieve.

Odin’s promise is to be able to deploy comprehensive automation platforms with integrated storefronts in a matter of hours.   

Lee Welch, general manager of cloud services for Ingram Micro Australia, said the software would benefit Australian channel partners by offering them access to a fast and simple way to sell a combination of integrated cloud services and web hosting solutions.

“By leveraging Odin Essentials, our partners can offer integrated offers and services, automate, own and control and billing, provision and manage via a unified control panel. Odin essentials give our partners the ability to scale their cloud practice, create new revenue opportunities and go to market faster,” he said.

Key enhancements in the latest release include: the ability for service providers to offer infrastructure as a service solutions even if they thought have the resources of infrastructure via Microsoft Azure; the WebHosting Plesk module, which allows service providers to sell Wordpress hosting plans and web and email shared hosting services; and VPS hosting-like containers and virtual machines through new technologies like Virtuozzo 7, for customers needing dedicated server resources and greater flexibility.

“Building a scalable and successful cloud practice can be complex and challenging due to the inefficiencies and high costs of manual-based processes commonly associated with the purchase, resale and provisioning of cloud technology,” Welch said.

“Ingram Micro’s Odin Automation Essentials is a preconfigured, self-branded web store and service automation platform that automates the end-to-end delivery of Microsoft 1-Tier CSP services, web and virtual private server (VPS) hosting services, and related product offerings.”

Welch said some of the product’s key differentiators from other cloud provisioning and management solutions was Odin’s unified interface across all services, the ability to sell a combination of traditional hosting, syndicated cloud service and a provider’s own services, the ability for providers to bundle their own solutions with CSP services, and the ability to integrate the software with external provisioning systems.

These new features are also available on Odin Automation Premium, which serves large hosting service providers worldwide, who need greater scalability, high availability, multi-cloud management and access to comprehensive reseller channels.

Odin has provided the underlying technology for Ingram Micro’s cloud marketplace since 2013. In 2015 Ingram acquired Odin, bringing the software developer’s 500 employees into the Ingram Micro fold.

Availability of the new hosting capabilities of Odin Automation Essentials is expected for the second quarter of 2017.