My reply would have made it off topic so here is to keep it on topic!
For context, I work in a company that in terms of computers we only ever serve 3 people including me (so the friction here is much less than that) they completely use Microsoft products and Autodesk. I dream of replacing their email and drive to Proton for Business but I have had no luck giving them a selling point to do so. What’s it that can be done? CAD I tried too, some luck is up but I really need to step it up… Even better if it is possible to get them to utilize linux instead but going as far as that can be considered a stretch
Additional Context, Cyprus is very very about using whatever everyone uses instead of what’s more secure or private with actually all business I could find (outside of some but I doubt I could have gotten the role, I digress) actually use Microsoft windows and office and teams and stuff like that. I have found none that utilizes anything else if super rarely you do. (And just to grasp the severity of it, Trying to deactivate my viber account [super popular messenger in the country] has caused to receive scrutiny from my family to the point I just reinstated it and broadcasted that people that wanna talk me should do it on Signal [With a few exceptions that meet the criteria, it’s about the friction]). A single mention of “Privacy” and you’re treated like you’re the idiot in the room, Security I never tried that but could be a better. [Security as in telling them it’s privacy friendly without telling them it’s privacy friendly, Honestly, that’s how bad this whole thing becomes]
Tbh this is why I wish to open my own company and use very different products which are: Proton, Threema and Secureblue (with a laptop like novacustom or Tuxedo and Yubikey Bio for safer authentication and SSO).
The network effect is strong even in small companies. Perhaps they want enterprise support or reliability seen in these Big Tech solutions.
Some starting questions to ask yourself would be: can you think of any small steps that will poke them into the right direction? Are you willing to become the unofficial IT guy in case anything breaks? Would you rather self-host a NextCloud instance or purchase a Proton business plan?
I think privacy and security arguments won’t really work in your case. You could use the “Buy European” argument and argue that you are willing to handle any problems that could happen when transitioning. If you’re lucky, the EU will start retaliating against American tech companies and make that easier for you!
Finally, create a fancy spreadsheet and presentation that records any costs and/or cost-savings that may occur.
Thanks, though it’s going to be painfully slow I’ll take what you said into consideration
oh you asked if I am willing to be the unofficial IT Guy, I actually work at office and IT Support so yes I’m responsible for the issues that occur on computers and providing better value or digital brand for the company anywho.
Speaking of keeping us updated I may have gotten way too excited for my own good.
Filen failed us, nothing special
Proton drive, Man, Proton you were so close, like close
the sync button for shared folder was there but it was not properly syncing like other cloud providers do (where if someone else on that shared folder puts a file or delete or anything, Proton does not sync until the other user does an action…)
I reported it to them all though such.
But anywho they’ll have to transition to proton for business to be able to use the business domain and have the intended structure I proposed to do so. But before doing that I told them to keep trying using it for personal reasons first, They refused…
Painful part has to be I was forced to delete their account, refusing wasn’t gonna work (and he would probably figure it out himself) and It would tarnish my reputation more than it has to be supposedly of course.
If you don’t need compliance, archiving, mailbox monitoring, doesn’t care about data leaks, and want simply a cloud drive and mailbox, then Proton is a good choice, but if you need to adhere to regulations and work with sensitive data, then you need to go for big tech companies.
And for the enterprise level cloud computing, I don’t think there are EU based alternatives.
For that:
Proton supports using outlook still meaning the business can go as usual after the transition and archiving continues as usual.
They have a business suite for a reason too.
Also proton would have been far more secure with it’s encryption and Proton Sentinel than if they were to stick to using Microsoft products.
Enterprise level, most companies at least host a NAS and have ITs manage them so…
But I’m the only one here and they formally decided to stick to cloud providers…
My understanding is that they completely forgot when I mentioned the benefits of encryption security wise and the whole buying eu movement. If that’s gonna happen then… Yeah idk what Choice I have left.
I think the lesson that we have to take here is that people would only go for it if they have a solution
and again all the more reason I prefer opening my own business than to work in one.
But more importantly it’s an uphill battle in itself.
It doesn’t matter which e-mail client you use. Your e-mails need to be scanned and archiving needs to be done on server level. Imagine you have an employee base with 330k people. Can you tell them to manage their backups on their own desktops / laptops?
NAS is a storage, not a cloud computing solution. Also, managing access and logging is not complex as cloud storages. And you can’t simply give everyone 5 TB of space like M365 E5 does. Costs will be sky high.
As for cloud computing, for example, you have EU customers and they need powerful servers for their enterprise apps. What will you do? I am talking about servers with 24 TB memory and 896 core CPUs (which we have just for one server). You can’t create a local datacenter and have the flexibility of adding / removing resources on adhoc.
Read the post again, This isn’t an enterprise kind of company, This is a small business with the only on-site IT Support personnel being me. (we have an off-site he can call but rarely did her ever do that anyways)
And what I am telling is, if you are going to support enterprise level customers with sensitive data, you can’t do it with Proton or any other SMBs. You need compliance policies, data protection policies, archiving for legal purposes and other regulatory settings.
If your clients doesn’t care about their data or doesn’t have anything sensitive, then go ahead. Use E2EE or whatever privacy friendly method you want to use.
Whenever’s people like it or not my solutions will be threema, proton and secureblue.
(And getting the company of 2 people to use proton is just going to be the first step and the final step as to not pressure anymore)
Big tech doesn’t do anything better than something like Proton would, they’re all in the end in the same or similar compliance
I am tired of people like you who do go critical on a private alternative that’s sure the golden standard and that’s fine but yet mention “BiG TeCh Is FiNe” when that’s not even the full scope.
I’m sorry, but stop, Let kevin see what he has to say.
With that being said, If it was a business that had more than like 7-20
yeah I see your point, forget even trying to convince them and no matter where I would work, I would find the same, rarely if ever jobs that ask people with knowledge for Linux or anything like that let alone ones that can accept me at least.
some important quotes to note of:
and once again why I am for creating my own business
and don’t worry I’m not setting unrealistic standards like putting bazzite on the gaming pcs in a gaming cafe (as much as I would love to do that)
which hopefully grasps to what extent I am willing to go and where I’m making exception
hopefully
Speaking of that extent, as I said before, If I can get them to use Linux, even better but I understand this is a stretch and it’s likely not gonna work.
Besides I feel Microsoft does have a decent way to manage the OS with group policy.
You could try having them switch their browser to Brave (with the crypto stuff disabled) or Firefox to show that there are alternatives without causing much friction.
tbh I have been considering importing and swapping their browser that’s a good idea actually.
Also I did that with Filen more or less but for the same purpose yeah.
Today I asked them about transitioning the company email to a custom domain and each one can have their own address using proton (they released group emails which is nice, basically they can have the contact@company.com.cy go to both the employees’s addresses and each one would have their own which is employee1@company.com.cy and employee2@company.com.cy for individual contact) I encouraged him to actually try Proton first to ensure you won’t find any issues before finalizing, even explained to them that they can continue using outlook with it. I also explained that you can actually forward emails coming from the old address to the new and slowly transition them to use the new address. It did give a bit of push which I consider a good thing. They’re now citing needing to finish jobs before the whole thing. I’m guessing it’s because of work and stuff and we don’t have time yet to do the whole transitioning but I guess when the time is right honestly yeah.
It’s really come to the point I kind of secretly install them to even feel convinced about it which while bad at least I justify my point and I do not want to install malware ever because of that, the point of doing that is to prove it to them. like you said transitioning browser to something like brave.
sorry also an update, I received a reply from proton about the proton drive issue, I admit I didn’t properly clarify the reproduction steps and did not give expected and actual behavior for the issue so I decided to clarify, I’ll see the response I received from proton for proton drive, Hopefully they become way better than Microsoft Onedrive when it comes to it.
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