Zimbra Desktop To Launch: Full Offline Functionality

I had read something about the online apps now coming offline; real quick. This should be an interesting scramble to see who is the fastest to get their app on the desktop now!

It appears that Apollo is blasting off quickly.

Rex

This is not really a desktop app. Accessing local file system does not make an app desktop app. Apollo apps don’t look or behave like native apps and integrate poorly with desktop ( things like registry, drag and drop between applications). If you want to develop desktop app then Write in native API.

@Correction, actually that’s what Apollo apps do so well. You can use native chrome, drag and drop from the desktop to the application, it shows up in the add/remove programs area.

It’s definitely not as “native” as writing an app in say, WPF, but for web technologies, it’s a pretty good solution.

The idea of having applications that can work equally well when offline as well as online is gaining steam because it makes it more convenient. The use of the client machine is the interesting bit though.

I’m amazed at the frequency of software release that’s coming out from Zimbra. Good work.

6 million paying customers!? Thats fairly substantial in such a short time

i think it will be the best of all..??!!

Great new.

They should first optimize the float left on their homepage so that it doesnt jump out of the structure on a 1024×768 resolution though.

erk

6 million paying customers is unbelievable. It’s great if it’s true, and I have no real reason to doubt it, it’s just surprising.

It’s funny how a few months ago everything was leaving the desktop for the webtop. I’m a little slow on the uptake so I’ll just wait for all of this to settle out.

When 64 bit becomes mainstream and 6 mb broadband DSL becomes mainstream - These types of offline web based apps will really begin to take off for SMBs and SOHOs and Virtual Companies - but there will always be formidable security hurdles to overcome as hacking grows increasingly complex

this prodotto is very good in italy..

Its Really Cool

This is another application inline with Webaroo. Webaroo allows users to cache website offline and allows users to carry therm on mobile. So remain connected always wherever you are.

Check more on http://www.webaroo.com

Zimbra is bleeding edge but how well does it run on older machines that many companies can’t replace anytime soon?

We tried Zimbra in our office but every user on a machine with less than 2.0GHz/1GB was complaining that it was just too slow. We took all the advice such as moving to firefox etc but it still lagged and users just stopped using it. Moved to Google apps now and so far so good.

Wonder how well this desktop app will run.

With 24 hour internet availability I don’t know how much sense offline browsing apps. make.

http://www.tekno-world.blogspot.com

- So they took the Iscrybe idea; of Offiline editing…. - and took it a step further.

- I can see the new Google Toolbar, including google Apps; with a widget bar like yahoo. - hmmm that just feels good…

- Rb

Rajeev makes a good point. Short term, there may be a need, but with the net being high availability right now, and real/stable mobile net access on the way (see the CITA/WiMax coverage today), I’m not sure if it makes sense to invest heavily in this area, unless there is some other benefit, like more app richness. If it’s the same app online and offline, you make the call…

http://www.SimplifyThis.com

@15 - I think this is a preemptive product. While there are offline uses, I mean that some companies are trying to make web-apps accessible while offline are doing so with the intent of making people more comfortable with using the app all the time.

There will come a time in the next decade or so where if your computer is turned on, you have an excellent chance of being online. As such, conditioning people (customers) now to use the app regardless of whether they are offline or online is a great way to break down the barrier for when the time comes when there is no offline/online.

How different is this from using an email client like Outlook locally on your computer??

Not everyone has 24 hour internet availability. What about people who travel for work and want to write emails while in the airplane and have them sent when they get an Internet connection? They rely now on tools like Outlook to work in offline mode. Such a need has made web-based-only email a non-starter for many businesses. This is a good thing if it works well.

These sort of applications are not as good as Outlook and other MS software, they are just another way of doing it.

http://www.iphone-3d.com

It is very slow !! Not sure how much it is going to impress the end user, whose main concern is going to be the ease of usability !!!

The point is that there is functionality you lose with Zimbra when accessing it via Outlook (or other clients). Tagging is the most obvious one I can think of. You also lose the ability to modify your account options in Outlook. This way, you get all the functionality of the web client plus the offline ability of a typical client.

On the flash side, the speed of Pronto! the Flash UI for Communigate is far more usable. The communigate product is also free for five users. See here
http://www.communigate.com/screenshots/pronto!.html

6 million paying customers: zimbra whitelabels their webmail app to isps - that’s how they get the 6 million number - still impressive but different from 6 million individual people signing up and forking over their credit card.

Zimbra! I’ve never heard of it but I have now, looks good, I shall have to investigate further, but GMail will always win.

6 million paying users, b.s. venture capital hype.

application sucks, slow as hell, and cant do anything more than wordpad.

what is the big deal about this fpos you keep promoting techcrunch, oh, I forgot, they are buying ads on your site…no wonder you are a fanboy of zimbra. this site is getting suckier by the minute, your reporting is less than ethical, this is just a paid infomercial.

The 6 million user number has to be taken with a huge box of salt. As an example, I have an email account assigned at Comcast now, and I have had email accounts created for me by Earthlink, AT&T (… and every other ISP I have had). All these accounts had one thing in common: I never accessed them, not even ONCE. It escapes me why anyone would want to use their ISP based email account. It has no advantage over a Yahoo or GMail and it has all the disadvantages. A lot of Zimbra’s “paid” accounts are of that flavor (they do have enterprise customers too, but I bet those are a small fraction of the 6 million number).

In another context, I learnt from an ISP that the pricing they offer their email provider is in the sub $1 per account. So the revenue from these ISP based “paid” mailboxes is likely to be quite low for Zimbra.

I fail to see how this relates to PCs exclusively The initial story you cited didn’t even relate to PCs. It was user error. Several of the headlines referred to “data” or “computer” or “server”. The only one that sounded like a PC was the “laptop” story. Next time you want to use real life stories to support your argument, use stories that relate to it. We’re not so stupid that we get scared by a bunch of security breach headlines and assume they’re the fault of lacking PC security.

@jc, I don’t see any Zimbra ads on TechCrunch. So what are you referring to?

As noted, the 6m figure is “paid mailboxes” which for all we know cost a nickel.

I still don’t really “get” Zimbra. I can understand an alternative to Exchange which includes a web-based version as a small feature. But with Outlook, Thunderbird, et. al., I’m not sure who would succumb themselves to a browser-based interface for day-to-day mail handling.

Actually, the Zimbra Desktop URL in this article is incorrect. The correct URL is: http://www.zimbra.com/products/desktop.html

@ YG (30), re:jc (27)
He’s thinking of Zoho, which does advertise on the site, and does receive a lot of good press here.
In fairness to Mike, he’s pretty good about pointing that out when they’re mentioned.
In fairness to Zoho, they make some pretty good products, a few of which I use (I am not affiliated with the company in any way, though I have received unsolicited compensation for providing feedback [they sent me a gift certificate to Amazon.com for critiquing Desktop - how cool is that?]).
In fairness to jc, both words start with “Z”. You really can’t expect people to read to the end of the word before frothing at the mouth.

I stand corrected. I still do not see the need for such light weight candy corn as this. I believe there are a host of other apps that offer more functionality and are not tooting their horn. Again, respectfully, I stand corrected regarding zoho mixup.

Correction: Their California office is in San Mateo, not San Francisco.

regarding the always on Internet - I live in Australia - and we do not have always on internet, our planes do not have always on Internet, we still have some sections of no connection at all - when driving between major cities such as Brisbane and Sydey - so an online application that works both online and offline makes great sense for here.

It also means that i can start an online application - get on a train or a plane and carry on with my work and then reconnect when i arrive at the other end i can reconnect again.

Even with permanent ADSL / Cable there is still some down time to the Internet from time to time - so its convienant that i can still work in offline mode if required.

Zimbra is a monster on the server. Yes it’s open source, but you can only run it on Enterprise Red Hat Linux, with at least 4GB RAM. And that for a web based groupware app. We are still searching for a good web based alternative that runs quickly and can install on any Linux and haven’t found it yet. I believe there is room for a PHP project to handle this.