[Users] September 22, 2020 Zeta Alliance Conference Call Summary

[Randy Leiker]

Hello Zeta Alliance Community, 

Here is a summary of this week’s conference call. A few brief reminders: 


    * Conference calls are every Tuesday and open to all using either the FreeConferenceCall.com VoIP app or via a dial-in number: [ https://www.freeconferencecall.com/wall/zetalliance | https://www.freeconferencecall.com/wall/zetalliance ] 
    * Each week’s call agenda can be found at: [ https://docs.google.com/document/d/1uUUDJpwp2CAylU6lxtbEdVcUX_qSbciyes6gLTWw2fY/edit | https://docs.google.com/document/d/1uUUDJpwp2CAylU6lxtbEdVcUX_qSbciyes6gLTWw2fY/edit ] 
    * A copy of each week’s summary is also posted to the Zimbra Forums: 
        * All Earlier Months: [ https://forums.zimbra.org/viewforum.php?f=9 | https://forums.zimbra.org/viewforum.php?f=9 ] 
        * August 2020 : [ https://forums.zimbra.org/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=68589 ] [ https://forums.zimbra.org/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=68589 | https://forums.zimbra.org/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=68589 ] 
        * September 2020 : [ https://forums.zimbra.org/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=68705 | https://forums.zimbra.org/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=68705 ] 
    * Constructive feedback on these call summaries is always welcome. 

September 22 , 2020 

Zimbra Cloud’s Target Market 
Singu S. (Zimbra Senior Vice President Product Marketing) shared that Synacor has been working through the launch of Zimbra Cloud the last few calendar quarters, which is based on the Zimbra 9 Modern UI with a back-end hosted in the Oracle cloud. He said that it is designed to be a SaaS offering, managed by Synacor, and co-branded presently with Zimbra BSP, XMission. North America was chosen for the initial roll out to get things figured out and Zimbra Cloud is a pilot program to figure out what makes sense on a broader global scale. Steve D. (Zimbra Product Manager) said Zimbra’s mission is to improve collaboration and that Zimbra Cloud and the on-premise deployments of Zimbra meet two different market needs. The on-premise product is a high-touch, feature rich product. In contrast, Zimbra Cloud is intended to be a low-cost, low-touch product as a way for the channel to go after customers that have previously not been reachable. It is not about migrating customers from on-premises Zimbra to Zimbra Cloud. 

Noah P. asked for an example of the type of customers Zimbra Cloud is designed to allow Zimbra BSPs to reach. Steve D. answered the intent is to go after smaller customers, such as 1-20 users, as there is no additional infrastructure for a BSP to setup. Singu S. explained that the self-help oriented way that Zimbra Cloud is setup, such as the ability to bring your own domain name, self-migrate email from other competing services (Gmail, etc.), allows for low-touch interactions from BSPs, which is priced accordingly. Noah P. said that from what he has read on XMission’s site, their existing on-premise Zimbra service is positioned as an upsell, with Zimbra Cloud being the entry level. Singu S. said that Synacor believes that Zimbra Cloud will appeal to customers who want more of a self-service experience, as compared to the white glove service offered by BSPs with on-premise Zimbra. Noah P. asked where can BSPs focus on differentiation so that Zimbra Cloud does not erode the on-premise Zimbra service. Singu S. said that for customers that have hundreds of gigabytes of mailbox data to migrate to Zimbra, or 20 or more mailboxes, that these types of customers are not the target audience for Zimbra Cloud. Instead this type of scenario would be best suited to the white-glove approach provided by on-premise Zimbra, provided by BSPs. The intent with Zimbra Cloud is to keep things very simple. Steve D. pointed out that data sovereignty and specialized security features are two examples where on-premise Zimbra is best suited, and areas that Zimbra Cloud is not going to touch. 

Zimbra Cloud Question & Answer 
Q: Noah P. said improving the migration technologies built-in to on-premise Zimbra would be a big boon for BSPs. Will those improvements make their way back to on-premise Zimbra? 

A: Steve D. said that Zimbra Cloud is a way to prove out new migration capabilities that are intended to eventually find their way back to on-premise Zimbra. 

Q: David M. asked if Synacor can develop customer personas that provide guidance to BSPs as to what types of customers are best suited for Zimbra Cloud? 

A: Steve D. said he and John Eastman have been working on this, and it will be shared later, when available. 

Q: From an earlier Zeta Alliance call, it was asked if ActiveSync and Exchange Web Services are available in Zimbra Cloud. 

A: Steve D. confirmed both are available. 

Q: Noah P. asked if Zimbra Cloud is equivalent to the Professional level license for on-premise Zimbra. 

A: Steve D. said it is not quite the same, but there are many similarities. Premium and Basic service levels will be available in Zimbra Cloud, where Premium is the only level available now. 

Q: Noah P. asked if Zimlet support is part of the Basic service level? 

A: Steve D. said that Zimlets are not available at this level. 

Q: Noah P. asked about billing integration. Mark S. commented that a Quickbooks integration would be much appreciated. 

A: Steve D. said that Zimbra Cloud has the ability to do credit card billing, as well as a capability to integrate in with Zimbra BSP billing systems. Integration work for billing systems is ongoing. 

Q: Mark S. asked if a time frame is available of when other BSP partners will be able to co-brand/sell Zimbra Cloud? 

A: Singu S. said a specific timeline is not yet available, as the business model is being determined yet. 

Q: Mark S. asked about how the improvements in Zimbra Cloud will make their way in to the on-premise version of Zimbra and how the next version might play out. 

A: Steve D. said that as they look at porting technology from Zimbra Cloud in to on-premise Zimbra, they may do this as part of version point releases, and they are fully committed to on-premise releases for at least 6 more years. 

Q: Noah P. asked about the marketing plans for Zimbra Cloud. As you roll out to more BSP partners, how will this be managed? 

A: Singu S. said that the model right now is to provide Zimbra Cloud in a co-branded manner, as they have with XMission. Synacor is trying to figure out how best to do this for additional BSPs. 

Q: Noah P. asked if one of the target markets for Zimbra Cloud is customers choosing Office 365? 

A: Steve D. said the upcoming November Zimbra patch tentatively will provide document editing on mobile devices, built-in chat, and possibly some file synchronization features. There are some things that are easier to do in Zimbra Cloud while other things are easier in on-premise Zimbra, and they are just trying to share the technology between the two as best as possible. 

Q: Noah P. asked what is Singu S. And Steve D’s roles in relation to Zimbra Cloud? 

A: Singu Srinivas is the Senior Vice President of Product Marketing and has been with Synacor for about 6 years. In addition to managing Zimbra product marketing, he is also responsible for Zimbra Cloud. Steve Davey is EVP of Technology and is responsible for product management, operations, development, security/privacy, and anything having to do with delivering the Zimbra product. 

Follow-Up On Calendly Integration For Zimbra Discussion 
As a follow-up to the September 15th Zeta Alliance call, related to the discussion about an integration of Calendly for Zimbra, Noah P. reported that since an integration with Calendly is not available, he tried one of the alternative suggestions offered in the prior call to take a look at harmonizely.com, and that it looks good. Steve D. asked if anyone documented the issues encountered when attempting to use Calendly with Zimbra. Noah P. said that Calendly does not seem to do two-way sync correctly with Zimbra and that Calendly seems to be narrowly focused on usage with Gmail and Microsoft Exchange servers. Calendly does not seem to work with ActiveSync or Exchange Web Services. He said it may be possible to do a direct integration with Calendly’s API as a workaround to their current integration limitations as another means of access. 

8.8.15 Patch 14 and 9.0 Patch 7 Now Available 
Mark S. shared that 8.8.15 Patch 14 and 9.0 Patch 7 were released today. 

Update With Ongoing Synchronization Issue for iOS Devices 
Noah P. asked if Mark S. had any updates to share on the synchronization issue discussed on recent Zeta Alliance calls related to iOS devices using ActiveSync. Mark said he has been working with John Holder at Synacor to continue troubleshooting the issue, but does not have new information to share. Cine asked if moving the affected mailboxes to another less busy Zimbra server helped, but Mark said this had no impact. Mark said that if he uses the Nine client app, there are no issues, but if the native iOS Mail client is used, then the issue re-appears. Cine said that Zextras is also still investigating this issue on their side too. Mark S. wondered if the issue could be related to AWS networking infrastructure, where he has his Zimbra servers hosted. Cine said Zextras has not been able to reproduce the issue on their own AWS infrastructure. Noah P. confirmed that he is seeing the same issue in his VMware private cloud environment too. Cine said that so far there are no clear causes on the server-side, but the information collected is still being investigated in depth. 


Randy Leiker ( randy at skywaynetworks.com ) 
Skyway Networks, LLC 

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