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+## 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/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/). You can also
+learn how Zulip is being used at the [End Point Dev](/case-studies/end-point/)
+software consultancy, the [GUT contact](/case-studies/gut-contact/) support
+agency, and the startups [Semsee](/case-studies/semsee/) and
+[Atolio](/case-studies/atolio/).