ActivePlatform 5.4: migrating to Microsoft Azure Plan, transfer tokens for Google Workspace, and IaaS calculator for VMware vCloud Director

July 20, 2021: ActivePlatform, the market player in automated cloud service brokerage systems, announced a new version of ActivePlatform. ActivePlatform 5.4 offers new tools to migrate Microsoft Azure and Google Workspace subscriptions. It also includes a customizable IaaS calculator in Storefront for configuring pay-as-you-go subscriptions to VMware vCloud Director.

Launching cloud services sales in a new market might be challenging. However, ActivePlatform has a powerful toolkit to make it easier. The migration helps quickly collect your first cloud service customers under the ActivePlatform ecosystem.

ActivePlatform can migrate Microsoft Office 365, Microsoft Azure, and VMware customers in bulk. To do that for you, our support team uses Excel spreadsheets and the command-line interface. ActivePlatform also allows reseller's managers to migrate GSuite and Google Workspace customers individually using the Operator Control Panel.

And now, two more migrating solutions have become available:

1. For Microsoft Azure Plan — in the Operator Control Panel.
2. For Google Workspace — in the Customer Control Panel and the Operator Control Panel.

ActivePlatform becomes more attractive for CSP resellers by supporting customers' transition from classic Microsoft Azure to modern Microsoft Azure Plan. You can now migrate new customers or customers with Microsoft Azure subscriptions in ActivePlatform.

The migration of customer's subscriptions includes two steps. The first step is manual and performed in MPC. On the second step, the migration is completed in ActivePlatform via the Operator Control Panel:

1. In Microsoft Partner Center: a CSP reseller manager transfers all customers' Microsoft Azure subscriptions to Microsoft Azure Plan. As a result, an Azure Plan "container" is created in MPC with all transferred subscriptions. Optionally, a manager can make some extra adjustments: set the budget for the "new" Microsoft Azure Plan subscriptions, activate permission to purchase Azure reservations via the Azure Portal, and grand permission for the customer access to the Cost Management section in Azure Portal.
2. In the Operator Control Panel: a CSP reseller manager specifies the target plan, account, and payment model. If it is a new customer, a manager specifies the customer's Microsoft Tenant Name and Microsoft Tenant ID.

The rest is done automatically. As a result, Microsoft Azure Plan subscriptions are created in the platform at once, under the same Azure Plan "container". As for an existing customer, the "old" subscriptions are deleted both in MPC and ActivePlatform. However, their consumption statistic remains available in the Analytics section of the Customer Control Panel.

With this update, we also encourage customers who use Azure cloud computing platforms to understand their subscription costs better. The advanced cost analysis tools are already available in the Customer Control Panel for a while.

Now, resellers can automatically send customers email notifications with brief monthly reports about Microsoft Azure and Microsoft Azure Plan consumption. Such reports help customers use the cost analysis tools more actively and thus allow more trust in the correctness of the cloud brokerage platform.

Another new migration tool in ActivePlatform 5.4 is dedicated to Google Workspace subscriptions. For example, a customer already ordered a Google Workspace subscription outside the platform. And there is a reseller who wants to move the customer to ActivePlatform. The fact is that Google allows transferring subscriptions between resellers. To do that, a transfer token generated in Google Admin Console is required.

So, such a customer can now migrate the subscription by ordering a new Google Workspace subscription in ActivePlatform for the same domain using a transfer token.

No reseller's manager or ActivePlatform support team stepping-in is required. However, reseller's managers can also order a subscription for a customer with a transfer token via the Operator Control Panel.

The pay-as-you-go model suits perfectly for customers with non-stable workloads, which scale up and down in time. For VMware vCloud Director, such subscriptions are billed for the actual resource consumption within quotas rather than the fixed amounts of resources. To allow customers to estimate their cloud cost before purchasing, a product page in Storefront now has a dedicated, customizable section with the IaaS calculator.

In this new section, available resources are represented as sliders. When a customer selects the anticipated amount of a resource to be consumed, the IaaS calculator displays the cost of a subscription per hour and month based on the expected consumption.

What is more, the mandatory top-up payment for customers who use VMware vCloud Director on a prepaid basis can now be defined by the IaaS calculator. The payment will be used to cover the subscription consumption within the first month. It means that a customer stays happy after the purchase and will not face unexpected service interruption.

Those your customers who work with the account balance will be satisfied with the following new feature. Top-up payments can now have a comment to be displayed as the payment purpose in receipts. Both managers and customers can specify the payment purpose for top-ups.

ActivePlatform 5.4 has a few improvements both in UI and internal logic:

• Filters in the Analytics section of Microsoft Azure Plan subscriptions are now more data-sensitive when it comes to their default values. If there are no consumption records for the default period, another suitable option is now selected in a filter so that it is less likely to see a page with empty data provided. Also, the current consumption bar chart can now contain up to one whole billing period without horizontal scrolling.

ActivePlatform is a full-service automated cloud brokering solution for cloud service providers and internal IT hubs that makes it easier to manage and control the cloud delivery and profitability. ActivePlatform unites vendors, providers, developers, and resellers into a single ecosystem for buying, selling, and managing cloud services. With its open vendor integration framework, ActivePlatform creates a vibrant catalog of cloud services ultimately helping businesses gain access to the services they need to thrive.

ActivePlatform enables SaaS, PaaS, IaaS aggregation, delivery, and monetization, provides simplified administration through central management, and enables critical visibility into resellers and cloud services consumption and usage. The platform has implementations with distributors, cloud solution providers, and telecom operators. ActivePlatform is headquartered in Europe.