portico: Add iDrift AS case study.

templates/zerver/footer.html

@@ -37,6 +37,9 @@
     <div class="footer-section">
         <h3>{{ _("Customer stories") }}</h3>
         <ul>
+            <li>
+                <a href="/case-studies/idrift/">iDrift AS {{ _("Company") }}</a>
+            </li>
             <li>
                 <a href="/case-studies/tum/">{{ _("Technical University of Munich") }}</a>
             </li>

templates/zerver/for/idrift-case-study.md

@@ -0,0 +1,116 @@
+## A distributed team
+
+For the past 20 years, iDrift AS has been offering infrastructure and security
+support for small businesses. iDrift AS is a distributed organization, operating
+from six offices across Norway. As such, this 30-person company has always
+depended on team chat to coordinate and support each other’s efforts.
+
+iDrift AS co-founder and owner Gaute Lund had long been frustrated with the
+limitations of the company’s collaboration tools. “When I learned about Zulip it
+was an absolute revelation,” says Gaute Lund. “Zulip’s threading model makes it
+so much easier to manage my team. As a leader, in just a few minutes I can get
+an overview over what's going on and see where my attention is needed.”
+
+
+## Async communication is a challenge
+
+From its founding, iDrift AS relied on IRC for internal communication, but the
+lack of a modern user interface proved to be a barrier for participation for
+management and non-technical members of the team. iDrift AS therefore moved from
+IRC to Slack in October 2016.
+
+“In terms of functionality, Slack is just souped-up IRC — there is no conceptual
+difference,” says iDrift AS owner Gaute Lund. “It doesn’t add anything
+significant other than the UI.”
+
+While Slack worked reasonably well for real-time communication, the busy Slack
+channels at iDrift AS were not effective for asynchronous discussions. “It was
+almost impossible to catch up on a conversation, or get an overview of what you
+missed while on vacation,” Gaute Lund says.
+
+> “Slack is just souped-up IRC — there is no conceptual difference.”
+>
+> — Gaute Lund, co-founder and owner of iDrift AS
+
+
+## Easy transition to Zulip
+
+When a team member recommended Zulip, Gaute Lund understood the potential of
+[Zulip’s threading model](/why-zulip/) to dramatically improve
+async collaboration at iDrift AS. The company evaluated Zulip in the summer of
+2020, and decided to make the move.
+
+The team took easily to Zulip’s topic-based threading paradigm. “Once people
+start using Zulip, it quickly becomes obvious why it’s better,” says Gaute Lund.
+
+The transition also went smoothly from a technical perspective. “It was not a
+lot of work to move everything over from Slack to Zulip,” says Gaute Lund. “The
+export/import tool worked really well to ensure that we had logs of all the
+prior conversations.”
+
+Chat integrations for operational systems and alerts are a crucial part of the
+workflow at iDrift AS. Zulip offers a [Slack-compatible
+interface](/integrations/doc/slack_incoming), so many integrations could be
+simply moved over. “For a handful of integrations where Zulip didn’t meet our
+needs, it was easy to [create our own
+integration](/api/integrations-overview#write-your-own-integration) or improve
+the existing one. It wasn’t a problem,” Gaute Lund says.
+
+iDrift AS decided to self-host its own Zulip server. Because Zulip is
+[100% open source](https://github.com/zulip/zulip), this option offers
+the same functionality as a [Zulip Cloud Standard](/plans/)
+subscription. “Zulip is very stable, and easy to run and to upgrade,”
+says Senior IT Consultant Tor Hveem.
+
+> “Once people start using Zulip, it quickly becomes obvious why it’s better.”
+>
+> — Gaute Lund, co-founder and owner of iDrift AS
+
+
+## Zulip helps leaders scale
+
+The move to Zulip transformed Gaute Lund’s day-to-day experience as a leader.
+“Using Zulip significantly increases the size of the team for which a manager
+can meaningfully know what’s going on,” says Gaute Lund. “There are 25 people
+for whom I have a very good grip on their work, whereas previously it was no
+more than a handful”.
+
+
+> “Using Zulip significantly increases the size of the team for which a manager
+> can meaningfully know what’s going on.”
+>
+> — Gaute Lund, co-founder and owner of iDrift AS
+
+As a Microsoft shop, iDrift AS uses Microsoft Teams for file sharing, scheduling
+and video calls. Would they use it for team chat? “For technical people, the
+chat experience in Teams is abhorrent,” says Gaute. “It’s almost impossible to
+get an overview of what’s happening. Only a small number of messages fit on the
+screen, and the discussions hidden inside threads make it even harder to see
+what’s going on.”
+
+In contrast, Zulip’s topic-based threading lets Gaute review conversations in
+batches, without being constantly interrupted by chat messages. Every few hours,
+Gaute looks through the list of recent Zulip topics to find discussions that may
+require his attention, and offers feedback as needed. Catching up is fast:
+“Updating myself on an incident might take a few seconds,” Gaute Lund says.
+
+
+## Efficient team communication
+
+With Zulip, the team can discuss everything from customer issues to major design
+decisions. “Zulip lets people focus on conversations where they can contribute,
+whether or not they happen to be online when the conversation starts,” says
+Gaute Lund.
+
+The Zulip chat also serves as a knowledge base for the history of the
+organization. “We have a very stable customer base, and Zulip search makes it
+easy to review past interactions,” Gaute Lund says.
+
+> “Zulip lets people focus on conversations where they can contribute.”
+>
+> — Gaute Lund, co-founder and owner of iDrift AS
+
+---
+
+Check out our guide on [using Zulip for business](/for/business) to
+learn more!

templates/zerver/idrift-case-study.html

@@ -0,0 +1,36 @@
+{% extends "zerver/portico.html" %}
+{% set entrypoint = "landing-page" %}
+
+{% block title %}
+<title>Case study: iDrift AS, distributed tech company</title>
+{% endblock %}
+
+{% block customhead %}
+<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0" />
+{% endblock %}
+
+{% block portico_content %}
+
+{% include 'zerver/landing_nav.html' %}
+
+<div class="portico-landing why-page solutions-page case-study-page">
+    <div class="hero bg-education">
+        <div class="bg-dimmer"></div>
+        <div class="content">
+            <h1 class="center">Case study: iDrift AS</h1>
+            <p>Distributed tech company</p>
+        </div>
+        <div class="hero-text">
+            Learn more about using Zulip for <a href="/for/business">business</a>.
+        </div>
+    </div>
+    <div class="main">
+        <div class="padded-content">
+            <div class="inner-content markdown">
+                {{ render_markdown_path('zerver/for/idrift-case-study.md') }}
+            </div>
+        </div>
+    </div>
+</div>
+
+{% endblock %}

templates/zerver/landing_nav.html

@@ -65,6 +65,9 @@
                     </div>
                     <div class="dropdown-column">
                         <li class="nav-header">Customer stories</li>
+                        <li>
+                            <a href="/case-studies/idrift/">iDrift AS company</a>
+                        </li>
                         <li>
                             <a href="/case-studies/tum/">Technical University of Munich</a>
                         </li>

zerver/tests/test_docs.py

@@ -163,6 +163,7 @@ class DocPageTest(ZulipTestCase):
         self._test("/case-studies/ucsd/", "UCSD")
         self._test("/case-studies/rust/", "Rust programming language")
         self._test("/case-studies/lean/", "Lean theorem prover")
+        self._test("/case-studies/idrift/", "Case study: iDrift AS")
         self._test("/for/research/", "for research")
         self._test("/for/business/", "Communication efficiency represents")
         self._test("/for/communities/", "Zulip for communities")

zproject/urls.py

@@ -627,6 +627,7 @@ i18n_urls = [
     path("for/research/", landing_view, {"template_name": "zerver/for-research.html"}),
     path("for/business/", landing_view, {"template_name": "zerver/for-business.html"}),
     path("for/companies/", RedirectView.as_view(url="/for/business/", permanent=True)),
+    path("case-studies/idrift/", landing_view, {"template_name": "zerver/idrift-case-study.html"}),
     path("case-studies/tum/", landing_view, {"template_name": "zerver/tum-case-study.html"}),
     path("case-studies/ucsd/", landing_view, {"template_name": "zerver/ucsd-case-study.html"}),
     path("case-studies/rust/", landing_view, {"template_name": "zerver/rust-case-study.html"}),