ONLYOFFICE Hosting Edition: how we made a cloud office for hosting providers
As our old friend Professor Farnsworth used to say, good news, everyone! We have released our solution for hosting and MSP-providers - ONLYOFFICE Hosting Edition.
The solution has already been tested in the cloud-based online store CloudLITE , which now offers its users our virtual office. Next, we will describe how the decision itself appeared and what tasks we had to work on in the process of its creation.
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ONLYOFFICE Hosting Edition is our multi- port solution integrated with billing systems.
That is, if you are a hosting or service provider, then you can deploy our cloud office on your servers and offer it as part of your own service to your customers. We, in turn, tried to simplify the integration process as much as possible.
Frankly, the idea of the solution appeared in the process of negotiations with the company DataLine, which launched the CloudLITE service. They wanted a cloud office among their services, and we wanted to find effective ways to deliver our software to the user. We were going to resell our enterprise solutions by delivering ONLYOFFICE to the end user of the server. In practice, this was expensive (especially for the very end user), and we turned to our SaaS solution with multi-portality.
Initially, multi-portality was developed so that, in the event of which, several portals could be created in the installation (for example, for different branches of the company) controlled from a single mission control center. The decision for hosters was this "case of what".
According to our idea, Hosting Edition should integrate into the scheme of the hosting provider easily and at no extra cost. It can be deployed in a few simple steps, as was actually done in CloudLITE.
(To be honest, let us say that this was preceded by lengthy negotiations, after which some of the parliamentarians, as honest people, had to marry each other. But, fortunately, it did)
Here are the steps:
1. Installing Document Server (ONLYOFFICE document editors). For this, you will need a server with 4-core CPU and 6 GB RAM with CentOS 7 installed (Ubuntu LTS is also suitable, but colleagues from CloudLITE have CentOS).
2. Installing the Hosting Edition . This requires a server of at least 6-core CPU and 8 GB of RAM with Windows Server 2012 installed. During the installation process, the domain of the hosting provider is specified, on which all portals will be created, and the Document Server IP address. Now all registered portals will “look” at it.
(A little explanation: yes, we need a couple of servers for our solution. Document Server is installed on a separate machine with our favorite editors on our favorite HTML5 and on a separate one - the Community Server with portals and everything else that works in our cloud office)
A little more about the technical requirements: for example, the width of the channel should be 500-750 Mb / s. At CloudLITE it is higher - more than 750 Mb / s. In combination with their hardware and the fact that DataLine servers are located in Moscow and the data does not go through half the world, the speed of ONLYOFFICE deployed in them is very, very good (we still hold back when we say so!).
Note also that from a technical point of view, they have all the same SaaS infrastructure as we have on Amazon servers that have become native. They have all the same services that we have - the indexing service, the backup service.
However, it cannot be said that we just took our cloud solution and gave it to our partner. I had to work to adapt it for hosters.
In principle, we have an API that will allow us to fasten the process of creating and configuring portals to anything without using ready billing, and there are clients in the integration process who use our API along with their user account.
But DataLine billing is outsourced, and for them we had to separately integrate with a third-party system. But we do not complain in any way, because as a result we have created a turnkey solution for hosting providers!
We have always independently managed paid portals. In the hosting solution, we needed to replace our payment process with funds provided by the BillManager of ISPsystem, which DataLine uses. The system automates customer registration, ordering and processing services, as well as the formation of invoices, acts, contracts, etc. Using their API, we gave BillManager full financial power.
(On the user’s side, this means that all actions with payment are not made on the portal, but in his personal account.)
In general, working with BILLmanager looks like this: the hoster unzips the necessary files on the server with the manager, creates the product and sets the tariff plans based on the templates available in the system (we insist that they coincide with ours).
Then set the parameters of the product (data required for registration of the portal). There are five such parameters: portal name, email, first and last name, password. In the hosting solution, we tried to simplify the procedure: when registering portals in our SaaS, there are more such parameters. For example, we ask you to specify the time zone, the portal language.
In addition, in the billing manager it was necessary to set up something specifically for partners. For example, CloudLITE asked us to make sure that the user could not buy two portals. This is done at the API level of the ISPsystem solution itself - we just hid the “Buy” button.
ISP, which is used by DataLine, is the most common system for hosting management in Russia. In the West, they love WHMCS. In general, we have integrated with the two most popular systems to make the implementation of our cloud office the easiest for hosts.
And by the way about WHMCS: an example for integration with them (see here ) we presented at HostingCon Global 2016 in New Orleans. The reception, which was provided to us at an event in which industry representatives from around the world take part, showed that we chose the right direction and the ONLYOFFICE solution is interesting for hosting and MSP providers.
Integrate with cPanel, APS Standard and Plesk. Eliminate minor flaws, finish IP telephony, integrate mail with Microsoft Exchange and even mess with security of documents (providing access to a document with a password, prohibiting copying, downloading and printing of a document, watermarks, etc.). In general, there is still a lot of work ahead.
The solution has already been tested in the cloud-based online store CloudLITE , which now offers its users our virtual office. Next, we will describe how the decision itself appeared and what tasks we had to work on in the process of its creation.
')
Briefly about the main thing: what is Hosting Edition?
ONLYOFFICE Hosting Edition is our multi- port solution integrated with billing systems.
That is, if you are a hosting or service provider, then you can deploy our cloud office on your servers and offer it as part of your own service to your customers. We, in turn, tried to simplify the integration process as much as possible.
Frankly, the idea of the solution appeared in the process of negotiations with the company DataLine, which launched the CloudLITE service. They wanted a cloud office among their services, and we wanted to find effective ways to deliver our software to the user. We were going to resell our enterprise solutions by delivering ONLYOFFICE to the end user of the server. In practice, this was expensive (especially for the very end user), and we turned to our SaaS solution with multi-portality.
Initially, multi-portality was developed so that, in the event of which, several portals could be created in the installation (for example, for different branches of the company) controlled from a single mission control center. The decision for hosters was this "case of what".
SaaS infrastructure: installation and equipment
According to our idea, Hosting Edition should integrate into the scheme of the hosting provider easily and at no extra cost. It can be deployed in a few simple steps, as was actually done in CloudLITE.
(To be honest, let us say that this was preceded by lengthy negotiations, after which some of the parliamentarians, as honest people, had to marry each other. But, fortunately, it did)
Here are the steps:
1. Installing Document Server (ONLYOFFICE document editors). For this, you will need a server with 4-core CPU and 6 GB RAM with CentOS 7 installed (Ubuntu LTS is also suitable, but colleagues from CloudLITE have CentOS).
2. Installing the Hosting Edition . This requires a server of at least 6-core CPU and 8 GB of RAM with Windows Server 2012 installed. During the installation process, the domain of the hosting provider is specified, on which all portals will be created, and the Document Server IP address. Now all registered portals will “look” at it.
(A little explanation: yes, we need a couple of servers for our solution. Document Server is installed on a separate machine with our favorite editors on our favorite HTML5 and on a separate one - the Community Server with portals and everything else that works in our cloud office)
A little more about the technical requirements: for example, the width of the channel should be 500-750 Mb / s. At CloudLITE it is higher - more than 750 Mb / s. In combination with their hardware and the fact that DataLine servers are located in Moscow and the data does not go through half the world, the speed of ONLYOFFICE deployed in them is very, very good (we still hold back when we say so!).
Note also that from a technical point of view, they have all the same SaaS infrastructure as we have on Amazon servers that have become native. They have all the same services that we have - the indexing service, the backup service.
However, it cannot be said that we just took our cloud solution and gave it to our partner. I had to work to adapt it for hosters.
Integration with billing systems
In principle, we have an API that will allow us to fasten the process of creating and configuring portals to anything without using ready billing, and there are clients in the integration process who use our API along with their user account.
But DataLine billing is outsourced, and for them we had to separately integrate with a third-party system. But we do not complain in any way, because as a result we have created a turnkey solution for hosting providers!
We have always independently managed paid portals. In the hosting solution, we needed to replace our payment process with funds provided by the BillManager of ISPsystem, which DataLine uses. The system automates customer registration, ordering and processing services, as well as the formation of invoices, acts, contracts, etc. Using their API, we gave BillManager full financial power.
(On the user’s side, this means that all actions with payment are not made on the portal, but in his personal account.)
In general, working with BILLmanager looks like this: the hoster unzips the necessary files on the server with the manager, creates the product and sets the tariff plans based on the templates available in the system (we insist that they coincide with ours).
Then set the parameters of the product (data required for registration of the portal). There are five such parameters: portal name, email, first and last name, password. In the hosting solution, we tried to simplify the procedure: when registering portals in our SaaS, there are more such parameters. For example, we ask you to specify the time zone, the portal language.
In addition, in the billing manager it was necessary to set up something specifically for partners. For example, CloudLITE asked us to make sure that the user could not buy two portals. This is done at the API level of the ISPsystem solution itself - we just hid the “Buy” button.
ISP, which is used by DataLine, is the most common system for hosting management in Russia. In the West, they love WHMCS. In general, we have integrated with the two most popular systems to make the implementation of our cloud office the easiest for hosts.
And by the way about WHMCS: an example for integration with them (see here ) we presented at HostingCon Global 2016 in New Orleans. The reception, which was provided to us at an event in which industry representatives from around the world take part, showed that we chose the right direction and the ONLYOFFICE solution is interesting for hosting and MSP providers.
What's in the plans
Integrate with cPanel, APS Standard and Plesk. Eliminate minor flaws, finish IP telephony, integrate mail with Microsoft Exchange and even mess with security of documents (providing access to a document with a password, prohibiting copying, downloading and printing of a document, watermarks, etc.). In general, there is still a lot of work ahead.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/307596/
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