Add blog post for improved data sync

pages/about-us/news/2018/improved-data-sync.md

+@title = 'Improved data synchronization'
+@author = 'drebs'
+@posted_at = '2018-04-27'
+@more = true
+@preview_image = '/img/pages/mozz/ascii.png'
+
+Last year, LEAP [was awarded a grant from the Mozilla Open Source Support
+program](https://leap.se/en/about-us/news/2017/mozilla-thanks) to [improve its
+encrypted email
+system](https://leap.se/en/about-us/news/2017/perf-improvements-soledad). We
+would like to share with you some of the work that has been done as a result of
+that, and also thank Mozilla for its initiative.
+
+The general idea was to implement separation of data and metadata for encrypted
+email storage and synchronization. That would allow for two fundamental
+improvements: a better user experience (because the list of email messages
+would then be able to be loaded before the actual contents of the messages),
+and a better usage of systems resources (encrypted messages were previously
+being treated as plaintext strings and thus consumed lots of unneeded memory
+and cpu).
+
+The [roadmap](https://0xacab.org/leap/soledad/wikis/2017-roadmap) included the
+creation of a platorm to assess the performance impacts of proposed changes,
+the actual implementation of the separation of data and metadata during
+synchronization, and some specific performance and scalability improvements of
+the sync server implementation.
+
+The live benchmarking platform that was created proved to be very useful to fix
+pre-existing performance issues and avoid unexpected performance bugs
+introduced during development. A CI environment was used to run performance
+test code for every commit made in the repository, and created graphs for
+resource consumption (time taken, and amount of memory and cpu used during
+execution). The quality of decisions made during development and the resulting
+code were improved by having a live performance-wise feedback about proposed
+changes.
+
+As for data and metadata separation, changes to
+[Soledad](https://leap.se/soledad) were made so that encrypted blobs can now be
+delivered by external aplications directly to the user's database. The main use
+case for this is for delivery of incoming email. LEAP's architecture is built
+so that unencrypted email messages get encrypted before being delivered to the
+user's mailbox. Metadata will soon be synchronized to the user's device, and
+the user will be able to see the information associated with the message
+(origin, date, subject, etc). But the actual content of the message will only
+be downloaded and decrypted on demand, when the user clicks to read the
+message.
+
+Other than those major developments, the MOSS grant has also alllowed us to
+experiment with multiple possibilities of performance improvements, as for
+example server parallelization, usage of different asynchronous libraries,
+Python 3 comparison, usage of proxies for load balancing, among others.
+
+We very much appreciate the support from Mozilla that has allowed for
+concentrated focus on Soledad. The work done within this contract has allowed
+for the creation of a system to handle encryption and transfer of binary data,
+leading to a much faster and scalable email solution. The critical
+implementation of a benchmarking system produced clear data to find
+bottlenecks, drive development, and allow for targeted changes to increase
+speed and scalability of data encryption and transfer chain.
+
+LEAP looks forward to applying that work to Bitmask Mail where end users will
+reap the benefits. Development of this new blobs system and its future
+integration with Bitmask Mail will be a critical step in bringing easy to
+deploy truly secure email to a mass market.