The 12 skills you need from your Zimbra integrator
Not just anyone can integrate Zimbra, the open source collaborative messaging solution. The client company, the SME, and in particular its IT department, 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, to ensure that deployment is fit for purpose.
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: analyse the issues upstream
If your integrator says 'yes' to everything you want and rushes in with a ready-made 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 to ask yourself the following questions:
- Who are you?
- What are your expectations?
- What are your needs?
- What are the difficulties encountered by the IT department?
This company provides services, and therefore consultancy, and in particular tackles the issue of hosting at the start 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 possible. You need to know how to define a "reasonable scope" in order to provide a reliable, long-term solution for the client company and its users.
Expertise no. 2: stick to your budget
If you don't know how to decipher the tricks that crooks use to make you spend more and more, here are a few advantages that you can easily obtain to maintain your profitability:
- all-inclusive pricing with storage (according to the allocated quota), support, backup and mobile licences, with no overcharging or hidden costs,
- the impossibility of knowingly exceeding your quota,
- the freedom to allocate a different quota to each account (multi-account customers).
Expertise no. 3: commit to a defined scope
It's a change from mass-market hosting providers where everything is automated
Source: an anonymous and zen CIO
Expertise no. 4: mastering account migration
It's always worth pointing out that your integrator must have mastered the migration of email accounts and have proven experience in order to protect you from all the negative side-effects, such as disruption, 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 capable of committing 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 keep up over long distances, the IT Director needs a professional hosting provider with many years' experience.
And since his peace of mind is of great value, we offer him some very reassuring elements such as :
- real-time infrastructure monitoring,
- 24/7 supervision by the technical team,
- several main local data centres (main infrastructure and storage),
- several backup data centres and telecoms interconnections,
- permanent, 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 solutions provider recommends methods and behaviours to adopt to limit risky behaviour, that's even better.
Expertise no. 7: Adopt eco-responsible behaviour
Want more gigabytes? It's always possible: but have you thought about sorting and separating live information from data that is no longer used, archiving it, and storing it on an external disk, such as administrator information, redundant information, etc.?
Reducing the size of images can also have a positive impact on your ecological footprint. On the other hand, each additional gigabyte leads to new energy consumption.
For example, a Zimbra business email account hosted by Ovea emits 137g of CO2 per year, which corresponds to 130 hours of lighting a 15W 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 email account.
Expertise no. 8: Have you test the solution before deploying it
The true partner of the IT Department works in stages:
- stage 1: we present the project to the CIO,
- stage 2, he validates the solution upstream in terms of operation, because he knows how it will be used,
- stage 3, the CIO appoints staff 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 IT department.
- Step 5: your supplier makes adjustments based on feedback before a full roll-out.
Expertise no. 9: Supporting you during the operational phase
Web hosting and email are up and running, everything is delivered on time. Do we say goodbye and thank you? No, says the IT Director! It's important to provide support during the operational phase, so that users aren't left 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 travelling abroad contacts support because he can't configure his calendar or email on his new iPhone, we'll get back to him and help him*. The CIO transfers the load: the responsibility matrix frees him up and wins his loyalty.
(*Any resemblance with situations experienced by Ovea is not accidental)
Expertise no. 10: be efficient
It goes without saying, says the CIO! To put it plainly, and to continue working in zen mode with a mail server that holds up, you need to be able to count on :
- a dedicated high-availability infrastructure with self-healing,
- high-end, high-frequency storage
- a redundant, very 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 areas, 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 one day you want to change hosting provider, you must be able to recover all your data: check this point in your contract. If your provider has omitted this point, its ethics on the issue of data reversibility are questionable: what happens if one of your employees makes a blunder and deletes email messages by mistake?
Is your supplier capable of restoring data within a day? Can you restore a single email rather than the whole working day?
Expertise no. 12: Provide you with expert customer support
Most Zimbra integrators offer a good technical infrastructure, but not necessarily a competent team capable of supporting the IT department by relieving it 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 knowing that he has the support of a dedicated technical team that is 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 our own 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 expressed in Edith Piaf's song, he shouldn't be looking for a brand name or software, but rather 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 the sources of trouble, the CIO can transfer the workload with complete peace of mind.
Article translated from French