Archive for: June, 2011

Boosting Sales by Adding SSL to Your Product Line-up

Last week I had the pleasure to host a webinar with one of our new Trust Service partners, Trustwave. In that session, Dan Marfione, Trustwave’s Partner Sales Director, SSL, gave resellers some background on Trustwave and talked at length about how adding SSL to your product line up can help boost sales and help your bottom line.

Some of the key things Dan pointed out during his presentation:

SSL isn’t just for banks and big business: there’s a real need for SSL to provide encryption right across the spectrum of Internet users. End-user confidence in Internet data security is not good right now thanks to some recent high-profile hacks. Whether your customers are mid-sized businesses with an e-commerce website, or just a small business that has a small mailing list and collects a little customer data, the transmission of that data needs to be encrypted in order to instill a sense of confidence in customers.
Higher-end SSL products like Extended Validation (EV) certificates aren’t just for the big guys anymore: Extended Validation certificates provided end-users with peace of mind. Not only is their data encrypted, but they know who they are sending it to. Again, that’s key in providing confidence to end-users and customers that they can trust who they choose to deal with online.

Customer Education is Key When Offering SSL

When it comes to offering SSL to your customers, Dan pointed out that it’s important to ensure they know what is involved in the process. Whether it’s an Easy Trust domain validated certificate, a Premium SSL organization validated certificate, or a Premium EV extended validation certificate, you need to make sure your customer knows what to expect during the validation process and what documentation is required of them.

Dan did a great job explaining the process from start to finish for each certificate type so you can be sure to not only make the initial sale, but also make sure that your customer gets that certificate validated and issued as quickly as possible.

To help you understand the buying and provisioning process, I showed you how easy the new Trust Manager in the OpenSRS Control Panel makes it to provision a new SSL certificate. I went step-by-step through the process of ordering, validating and receiving an Easy Trust domain-validated SSL certificate and showed you the emails that go out, and explained the process that your customers will go through to have an SSL certificate ordered and in their inbox in minutes.

On-demand Recording Available

If you missed the presentation, we’ve archived the session for you on OpenSRS.com. Click here and you’ll be able to view that recording on-demand, at any time.

For more information on Trustwave and the full line up of Trustwave SSL products available through OpenSRS, including the lowest cost DV certificate we offer, visit the Trustwave SSL product page.

Congratulations to Our Winners

We also want to pass along our congratulations to three lucky attendees. Thanks to Trustwave, we gave away an iPad 2, an iPod Touch and a $25 iTunes gift card to three attendees in a random drawing following the webinar.

Jason Klien was the winner of the iPad
Doug McIntyre won the iPod Touch
Arvind Parmar will receive the iTunes gift card.

Decommissioning the Older OpenSRS SSL Service

Late last year we rolled out the OpenSRS Trust Service which is meant to replace the existing older SSL Service. At the time we said that we would be migrating existing SSL certificate orders to this new Trust Service sometime in the future and that we planned to eventually decommission the older SSL Service.

Today we’re announcing a few things around that migration and decommissioning plan to all Resellers so you can plan accordingly:

Effective November 1, 2011, we’re going to decommission the older SSL Service platform along with the TPP API for SSL.

After that date, it will no longer be possible to use the RWI2 to provision or manage SSL certificates Use of the TPP API for SSL will also be disabled.

Please note: the Managed DNS Service which also uses the TPP API and RWI2 will continue to function normally after November 1, 2011.

As part of this shutdown, we’ll be migrating existing SSL orders from the older SSL Service to the new OpenSRS Control Panel Trust Manager. That migration will also happen on November 1, 2011.

If you are wondering if this has an impact on you, here’s some help to figure that out:

API User Impacts

For resellers with API integrations with OpenSRS for SSL:

If you have an API integration for SSL with the older TPP API:

If you have an API integration that uses the older TPP API, then you are affected – you need to move your API integration to the newer OpenSRS API prior to November 1, 2011.

If you have an API integration for SSL with the newer OpenSRS API:

If you have an API integration for SSL that uses the OpenSRS API (the same one as the Domain Service uses), then you are already using the new Trust Service and there’s nothing you need to do.

Non-API User Impacts

For those who don’t use the API, but who do provision and manage SSL certificates through OpenSRS, there are two possible scenarios:

If you use the RWI2 to provision and manage SSL:

If you have existing SSL orders in the older SSL system (managed from RWI2), those orders will be migrated to the new Trust Service on November 1, 2011. You won’t need to do anything to make that migration happen, but you should prepare by familiarizing yourself with the new Trust Manager.

If you use the Trust Manager to provision and manage SSL:

If you already use the Trust Service and Trust Manager in the new Control Panel for all your SSL orders, then you are all set. Nothing will change.

End-User Impacts

In all cases, there is no impact on existing SSL certificates. You won’t need to reissue any certificates and there won’t be any impact to your customers’ SSL certificates.

More Information

We have more information available including a list of frequently asked questions. If you have any concerns about this move and how it may impact you, or your customers, please don’t hesitate to call Reseller Support. Contact information is available here.

Holiday Hours: Canada Day, Friday July 1st, 2011

This coming Friday our offices will be closed to celebrate Canada Day.

Canada Day, also affectionately referred to as Canada’s Birthday, is a federal statutory holiday celebrating the anniversary of the July 1, 1867, enactment of the British North America Act, today called the Constitution Act, 1867, which united three British colonies into a single country, called Canada within the British Empire.

Originally called Dominion Day, the name was changed in 1982, the year that Canada gained full independence from the United Kingdom. Canada Day observances take place throughout Canada as well as internationally.

Historical facts aside, we think it’s the perfect long weekend for our pet polar bears (each Canadian has one you know) to just chill out and enjoy a cold one on a warm, sunny day. The beaver on the other hand… we’ve tried to get him to relax, but without resorting to prescription meds, there doesn’t seem to be much chance of that.

For those of you more interested in serious business, here are the hours of operation during the holiday:

Our Technical Support team continues to be available 24/7 to assist you.

Please note that during this closure, there will be:

No orders or requests processed for the following TLD’s: .at, .fr, .ch, .li, .dk, .com.mx
No special processing for .ca (registrant transfers, conflicting and municipal registrations) or .eu/.be (redemptions).

Hours by department:

Department	Dates and Hours
Technical Support	Regular hours
Payments	Email support: payments@opensrs.org
Compliance	Closed July 1st (Friday)
Service Bureau	Closed July 1st (Friday)

ICANN: Get Ready for the Next Big .Thing

Last week, ICANN published this video that does a good job providing an overview of generic top level domains (gTLD) and the introduction of new gTLDs:

Some of the staff here have put a collection jar in the kitchen at the Tucows office so we can apply for .cow, but we’re just shy of the $185K application fee by about $184,985. We remain confident that our goal will be met and have plans for a fundraiser BBQ that should quickly close that gap.

If you’re interested in donating, or would just like to show us your support, please let us know in the comments.

Thank Moo!

A Plea from Marketing

Almost every time I meet with an OpenSRS reseller, they end up saying, “Hey, it would be great if you had something to help me deal with (particular marketing challenge).”

And I end up saying, “We do have that! #@!!%! We posted it on the blog five times and emailed you like thirty.” And they say, “OK, calm down, I’m just asking…” And I say, “You’re just asking?! Let me ask you this…” And they say, “Stop pushing me.”

Anyway, since apparently we are reseller friendly, I have been asked to apologize and politely remind you that we have wonderful marketing resources and capabilities you should take advantage of.

Want to make it easy as possible for customers to transfer more domains to you?
We have white label videos and tutorials to help them transfer away from your top competitors.

Want to educate your customers about the value of contact privacy?
Check out our white label video and PDF on the benefits of revealing less in their Whois records.

Want to help your customers understand that it does, in fact, matter who manages your domain name?
We have Tucows Domains badges and a Tucows Domains Promise that you can link to.

We have marketing kits for TLDs, SSL brands and goMobi. We have end user tutorials on configuring our email service with the leading mobile devices. We have tons of end user documentation and videos that we can help you brand as your own. We can help you segment your own mailing lists for transfer campaigns or name-based promotions. See anything you like going on at Hover? We can help you replicate it. Have another marketing challenge that you think we might be able to help with? Ask us.

We are not trying to turn ourselves into retailers. We also understand that the resources listed above will likely not help you solve your most pressing business problems. But we have 11,000 resellers that do have some challenges and needs in common. Many of you do not have the resources that we do. If there are opportunities to find efficiencies and to make your jobs a little easier, we want to do that.

So, please use what we have and please let us know if there is anything else we can do to help. Damn it.