The 12 skills you need from your Zimbra integrator
Not just anyone can integrate Zimbra open source collaborative messaging. Small and medium-sized businesses, and in particular their CIOs, are legitimately looking for a partner they can trust.
The real added value of a specialist integrator lies in the use of professional messaging that has been thought through in advance, for a deployment that meets usage requirements.
When it comes to collaboration, you need solid expertise in cloud-hosted integration solutions. But that's not all: let's take a look at the ideal "contract of trust".
Expertise no. 1: analyze the problem in advance
If your integrator says "yes" to everything you want, and rushes in with a ready-to-use cloud solution, that's a very bad sign. Run away!
The first reflex of a Zimbra integration expert is to think before you act, and ask yourself the following questions:
- Who are you?
- What are your expectations?
- What are your needs?
- What are the difficulties encountered by the CIO?
This company provides services, i.e. consulting, and in particular addresses the question of hosting upstream of a project, rather than at the end.
Another hallmark of this analytical capacity is the ability to say no when the answer is not feasible. You need to know how to define a "reasonable perimeter" in order to provide a reliable, long-term solution for the client company and its users.
Expertise no. 2: stay within your budget
If you don't know how to decipher the tricks that tricksters use to make you spend more and more, here are a few advantages you can easily obtain to preserve your profitability:
- all-inclusive pricing with storage (according to your allotted quota), support, backup and mobile licenses, with no overcharging or hidden costs,
- the impossibility of knowingly exceeding your quota,
- the freedom to allocate quota differently for each account (multi-account customers).
Expertise no. 3: commit to a defined scope
It's a change from mass-market hosting where everything is automated.
Source : an anonymous and zen CIO
Expertise no. 4: mastering account migration
It's always a good idea to remember that your integrator must master the migration of e-mail accounts, and have proven experience to protect you from all the negative side-effects, such as disruptions, backtracking - in short, all the sources of inconvenience for your users.
He will propose a schedule that he will of course respect, thanks to a methodology of actions that he will have explained to you beforehand. This integrator is also able to commit to Zero Message Loss, with a D-Day switchover. Of course.
Expertise no. 5: ensuring a high level of reliability
In order to successfully integrate Zimbra collaborative messaging, and to be able to stay on the road over long distances, the CIO needs a professional hosting provider with many years' experience.
And since his peace of mind is of the utmost value, we offer him reassurance in the form of :
- real-time infrastructure monitoring,
- 24/7 supervision by the technical team,
- several local main data centers (main infrastructure and storage),
- several backup data centers and telecom interconnections,
- continuous real-time testing of service continuity.
Expertise no. 6: solving security problems
When an SME has a security problem that it can't translate into a technical solution, it needs to be able to rely on its partner for at least the following:
- anti-virus,
- anti-spam
- anti-phishing,
- real-time monitoring,
- inbound firewall filtering and outbound filtering.
And if your bespoke open source solution provider recommends methods and behaviors to limit risky behavior, all the better.
Expertise no. 7: adopt eco-responsible behavior
Do you want more gigabytes? It's always possible: but have you thought about sorting and separating live information from data no longer in use, archiving, and storing on an external disk this information, such as administrator information, redundant info, etc.?
Reducing the size of images can also have a positive impact on your ecological footprint. Conversely, each additional gigabyte means new energy consumption.
For example, a Zimbra professional e-mail account hosted by Ovea generates 137g of CO2 per year, equivalent to 130 hours of lighting a 15-watt fluorescent tube (5.5 days). This eco-design approach is carried out in partnership with ADEME, the French Environment and Energy Management Agency, and results in a -30% reduction in the carbon footprint of an e-mail account.
Expertise no. 8: let you test the solution before deploying it
The true partner of the CIO acts in stages:
- step 1, we present the project to the CIO,
- step 2, he validates the solution upstream in terms of operation, because he knows how it will be used,
- step 3, the CIO appoints collaborators to carry out user tests,
- step 4, your Zimbra integrator launches the test phase,
- step 4 bis, your supplier makes a demonstration platform available to the CIO.
- step 5, your supplier makes adjustments based on feedback, prior to a global roll-out.
Expertise no. 9: supporting you in the operational phase
Web hosting and e-mail are up and running, and everything is delivered on schedule. Do we say goodbye and thank you? No, says the CIO! You can't leave users in the lurch: your supplier's technical team will make sure that both are working properly.
And if the CEO of a major international group who's traveling abroad contacts support because he can't configure his calendar or e-mail on his new iPhone, we'll answer his questions and help him*. The CIO transfers his workload: the responsibility matrix frees him up and builds loyalty.
(*Any resemblance with situations experienced by Ovea is not fortuitous)
Expertise no. 10: be efficient
It's a no-brainer, says the CIO! Clearly, to continue to work in zen mode with a mail server that holds up, you need to be able to count on :
- a dedicated, self-healing, high-availability infrastructure,
- high-end, high-frequency storage
- a redundant, high-speed, multi-operator network,
- direct transit (peering) with hundreds of operators worldwide,
- continuous, real-time performance testing.
Watch out for breakdowns!
The news regularly points the finger at weaknesses, such as recurring breakdowns at industrial hosting providers. As in many fields, it's not the size of the supplier that counts, but the quality and performance of the service...
Expertise no. 11: guarantee the reversibility of your data
If you ever want to change hosting provider, you need to be able to recover all your data: check this point in your contract. If your provider has omitted this point, his ethics on data reversibility are dubious: what happens if one of your employees blunders and deletes e-mail messages by mistake?
Is your supplier capable of restoring data within a day? Is it possible to restore a single e-mail rather than an entire working day?
Expertise no. 12: providing you with expert customer support
Most Zimbra integrators offer a good technical infrastructure, but not necessarily a competent team capable of supporting the CIO's activity by relieving him of a heavy workload and worries to manage.
At Ovea, for example, the requirement for high availability also applies to customer support: here again, it's a commitment of responsibility mutually defined by their matrix. The CIO can sleep soundly, supported by a dedicated technical team, highly committed to the notion of operations and service continuity.
And to avoid any technical drawbacks, Ovea puts everything on your side:
- Hosting in Montpellier, France,
- dedicated infrastructure and proprietary network,
- 24/7 monitoring,
- compliance with CNIL regulations,
- an on-call team.
When the CIO sees life as rosy
In appvizer's opinion: if the CIO really wants to adopt the state of mind conveyed by Edith Piaf's song, he shouldn't be looking for a brand name or software, but rather for a user benefit that meets the needs and uses of his company.
This is the best starting point for contacting a Zimbra integrator: if it listens, advises and demonstrates its ability to control sources of trouble, the CIO can carry out the transfer of responsibilities with complete peace of mind.
Article translated from French