Background

Cascadia Behavioral Healthcare, the largest provider of mental health services in the state of Oregon, has contracted OpenSourcery to implement the Zimbra open source calendaring and email application across their ninety Oregon locations. Cascadia provides mental health, addiction help and crisis assistance across the state, so having a reliable system for scheduling and communication is essential.

Cascadia Behavioral Healthcare is familiar with Zimbra from a previous arrangement, but their former service didn't live up to expectations. They were concerned about the frequent business hours downtime, insufficient network speeds, inflexibility, and poor response time to problems. In response, Cascadia approached OpenSourcery because of our reputation for technical excellence, personal service, and local expertise.

Ultimately, Cascadia wanted not only faster service, they wanted to know that their needs would be taken care of by people who really care about their mission. When they call OpenSourcery, real humans will answer the phone. When they need a task completed, OpenSourcery will see the job through.

Scope of Work

• Zimbra Collaboration Suite[1] hosting for 1,000 users
• Complete setup of hardware and software to accommodate all users
• Failover server for redundant protection
• Data migration of all user data from previous server to OpenSourcery hosted server
• 24x7 hardware and software support
• Regular software updates

[1]Learn more about Zimbra here. Essentially, it's a competitor to Microsoft Exchange Server and Outlook. It's gaining popularity worldwide; in fact, Comcast just announced that it will provide a Zimbra mailbox for every Comcast user. More on that that story.

Since 2006 OpenSourcery has enjoyed working a wonderful client: the Moloka'i Community Service Council, MCSC. I met Karen Holt, the executive director, in 2005 through PSU as we were working with EZ Wireless to help them design and implement a city-wide wireless network in Kaunakakai, Hawaii (island of Moloka'i).

In addition to helping them with their wifi networking, we also went in and overhauled their IT systems in 2006. Improvements included new Cisco switches replacing hubs, cleaning up DNS off their internal "local.com" Windows domain to djbdns, and a migration off Microsoft Exchange to Zimbra. Their local IT staff were also interested in learning Linux and the number of Ubuntu hosts has only gone up with plans to migrate off the Windows 2003 server for file and print sharing.

Back on the email front, Zimbra provides tools to migrate Outlook PST files on local storage, and connect directly to an Exchange server to scoop up mail and address books. Given Karen's 10GB mailbox, Outlook had to go and the migration tools worked as advertised.

Two years later Zimbra has gone through multiple upgrades and added many useful features. It has even survived an acquisition by Yahoo. This week completes a final migration to a dedicated server off VMware (due to increased usage), and an upgrade from 4.5.7 to 5.0.8.

MCSC helps the local community through programs including: an elementary and high school education program, educational scholarships, a mental illness center, a commercial kitchen, brownfield cleanup, at-risk family assistance, and the latest project: the Moloka'i Ranch Purchase.

The island of Moloka'i has the highest percentage of foreign land ownership in Hawaii. This ownership has put profits ahead of environmental and cultural sustainability.

MCSC is leading a new global campaign to purchase the ranch to begin restoration and preservation of Hawaii's last native lands.

More information can be found on their website: