[Users] September 8, 2020 Zeta Alliance Conference Call Summary

[Randy Leiker]

Hello Zeta Alliance Community, 

Here is a summary of last 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 ] 
        * July 2020 : [ http://forums.zimbra.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=68486&sid=f6efb04e7b2efd87cdd77e53d28be082 | http://forums.zimbra.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=68486 ] 
        * 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 8, 2020 

Questions and Answers About Zimbra Cloud 
John E. said that Zimbra Cloud officially launched last week at [ https://zimbracloud.com/ | https://zimbracloud.com/ ] as a SaaS offering with Zimbra BSP (Business Service Provider), XMission, as the initial partner. John asked those on the call if anyone had questions about this new offering. What follows is the discussion in question and answer format: 

Q: Mark S. asked if a time frame is available of when other Zimbra partners can start selling Zimbra Cloud? 

A: John E. said he did not have an answer to this question at this time. 

Q: Mark S. asked if XMission is hosting the Zimbra Cloud service, or if Synacor is hosting it? 

A: John E. said that Synacor is hosting it, but Zimbra Cloud will be sold exclusively through the channel via Zimbra partners. It is another tool that partners can use to augment their own self-hosted Zimbra offering to capture new customers. 

Q: Mark S. asked which partners will be eligible to sell Zimbra Cloud (BSPs, VARs, or both)? 

A: John E. said that to his knowledge, it will be available to both BSPs and VARs. 

Q: Mark S. asked what type of customer would be the best prospect for Zimbra Cloud? 

A: John E. said that it is up to partners to make this determination, but generally Zimbra Cloud is not designed to be quite as flexible as on-premise installs of Zimbra. However, Zimbra Cloud offers partners the ability to place low margin customers, that partners might be providing service to today with an on-premise Zimbra install, and instead set them up with Zimbra Cloud which is self-service orientated, while partners can use their currently installed on-premise Zimbra infrastructure to service higher margin customers. 

Q: Mark S. asked what provisioning and migration tools are available for Zimbra Cloud? 

A: John E. said that the tools differ from on-premise Zimbra in that they are designed to function on an account-by-account self-service basis, rather than for bulk provisioning and migration for whole domains. The Zimbra Cloud tools use a wizard-driven approach to import mailboxes from any other supported service, which currently includes: GSuite/Gmail, Office 365, Yahoo, AOL, on-premise Zimbra, or any other mail server that supports IMAP. 

Q: Mark S. asked if there is any type of bulk provisioning available for Zimbra Cloud that Zimbra partners can use? 

A: John E. said not at this time, but he thinks this is coming in the future and Zimbra Cloud fits smaller organizations best at this time. 

Q: Mark S. asked in the scenario where an organization is using GSuite or Office 365 today, and wants to migrate to Zimbra Cloud, does each user need to go to the Zimbra Cloud web site to register their account and perform a migration? 

A: John E. said there is flexibility where the on-boarding happens for individuals, either by using a trial Zimbra Cloud account, or using an API accessible via a Zimbra partner. For mailbox provisioning that would normally be done through the Zimbra Admin Console or zmprov, for on-premise Zimbra installs, Zimbra Cloud offers an API to do these types of tasks. 

Q: Mark S. said that one of the challenges in the on-boarding process for new customers, is ensuring that all of the email aliases are accounted for and setup. How is this handled for Zimbra Cloud? 

A: John E. said that email aliases are not yet available in Zimbra Cloud but it is on the road map. When someone signs up, they are initially provisioned an account using a sub-domain on a Synacor owned domain. A Zimbra Cloud customer can then register their own domain for regular mailbox usage. The process of creating DNS MX (mail exchanger) records or registering a new domain name is currently tailored for XMission and may differ when additional Zimbra partners can begin offering Zimbra Cloud. 

Q: Mark S. said that some of import tools built in to Zimbra Cloud today seem to only allow importing of email, while others allow for importing email, contacts, and calendars and asked when the importing options for Zimbra Cloud will reach parity with those available for on-premise hosted Zimbra? 

A: John E. said that Zimbra Cloud is focused on the import processes that can be done in an automated way for end users, and additional import capabilities will be added in the future, when possible. 

Q: Mark S. asked about how mailbox backups and restores are handled for Zimbra Cloud? 

A: John E. said that XMission has the ability to raise support cases with Synacor to request mailbox restores and that self-service restores are forthcoming as a future feature. 

Q: Mark S. asked if Zimbra Cloud has a unique selling proposition apart from services like GSuite or Yahoo? 

A: John said that Zimbra Cloud will always be feature-limited, as compared to what a partner can sell to their customers using an on-premises version of Zimbra, and Zimbra Cloud is priced accordingly. 

Q: Marc G. expressed concerns about feature parity between what will be available in Zimbra Cloud, as it applies to HA (high-availability), and on-premises Zimbra 8.8.15 and 9.0, since Zimbra Cloud is based on Zimbra X. Zimbra X achieves high-availability using clustered Docker containers, managed by Kubernetes. 

A: John E. said that the current plans are to make as many features in Zimbra Cloud available within Zimbra 9 as practical. Randy L. commented that the Zextras road map ( [ https://www.zextras.com/roadmap-2020/ | https://www.zextras.com/roadmap-2020/ ] ) suggests that something is in the works for Zimbra mailbox HA in November 2020 which may at least partially address the HA needs for on-premise installs of Zimbra. 

John E. said that if anyone has additional questions about Zimbra Cloud and how it relates to partners, that he encourages partners to reach out to him. 

Summary Of Recent Synacor Investor Call 
Mark S. shared a summary of the most recent investor call with Himesh Bhise (CEO of Synacor), and said he has concerns about the future of SaaS sales, like Zimbra, for Synacor. He said that a statement from Himesh about the long term strategy for Zimbra would be very helpful. Mark encouraged those on the call to listen to the most recent and future investor calls with Himesh. John E. said the long term strategy includes not only the Zimbra product, but also the Zimbra business side too. Mark S. shared a link to the 2nd quarter earnings call: [ https://event.on24.com/wcc/r/2402372/3EC33ECC1E1E1A220DE71F79D3DE2BEE | https://event.on24.com/wcc/r/2402372/3EC33ECC1E1E1A220DE71F79D3DE2BEE ] . Mark also shared this link [ https://synacor.com/investor-relations/overview/ | https://synacor.com/investor-relations/overview/ ] containing other investor news and presentations. 

Zimbra Road Map and Partner Concerns 
Marc G. and Mark S. said they would both greatly value a longer term road map being published by Synacor beyond just the current Zimbra LTS (long term support) releases. Current LTS releases are shown on this page: [ https://www.zimbra.com/support/support-offerings/product-lifecycle/ | https://www.zimbra.com/support/support-offerings/product-lifecycle/ ] . Mark S. thinks a major missing piece in the Zimbra road map is a hybrid hosting offering, as compared to options available with Office 365’s F3 and F5 service tiers. John E. said that the road map is driven entirely by customer demand and that Zimbra Cloud is not the only thing Synacor might sell, for example, variations to Zimbra Cloud are sometimes sold to government agencies, where Synacor on-site employees manage a private version of Zimbra Cloud for those government agencies. Mark S. commented that verticals like the healthcare industry value the hybrid model where data sovereignty is important and BAAs (business associate agreements) normally need to be signed. John E. said that he is very focused on attrition situations with Zimbra involving Office 365, and he is putting together some package options for Zimbra partners to better compete. These options may appear in Quarter 1 2021 or Quarter 4 2020, at the earliest. Mark S. suggested creating partner co-branding slicks for marketing and said that this would be helpful for partners to add their own logos to the slicks. John E. said he has been pushing to lift a number of restrictions that currently exist with marketing materials available in the Zimbra BSP program and that if there are any pain issues, he encourages partners to raise those issues with him for further discussions. 

Free/Busy Interoperability and Other Zimbra Integrations 
Mark G. asked about how to connect Zimbra to an Exchange server for free/busy information. Mark S. suggested checking the Zimbra Wiki, which has a couple of articles discussing this topic. John E. commented that a common issue with free/busy interoperability is that there are no standards, since everything uses proprietary methods. Marc G. also asked about how to integrate Zimbra with services like Calendly. John said that Zimbra has looked at the possibility of creating a Zimlet for this integration and that Zimbra is also looking closely at integrations for other general-use services, rather than just for specific verticals, as this could otherwise compete with partners that specialize in vertical-specific integrations for Zimbra. 


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

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