Yahoo’s Zimbra Releases v5.0 with BlackBerry Support, New Ajax Features
Mark Hendrickson
17 comments »
Zimbra, an open-source alternative to Microsoft Exchange Server that was acquired by Yahoo this past September, has released version 5.0 of its collaboration suite. The upgrades are various and wide-reaching, with support finally here for the BlackBerry and several improvements made to Zimbra’s browser-based email client.
In addition to managing their email, calendars and contacts, customers can now use Zimbra’s browser-based client to instant message, collaborate on documents via wiki, and share files. Yahoo search functionality, and local search in particular, has been integrated into the browser-based client as well, enabling users to search Yahoo Maps from within their email interface.
Zimbra’s desktop client, which was soft launched last March and emulates much of the browser-based client, now supports non-Zimbra email accounts (like Yahoo Mail and Gmail, or any POP/IMAP account). However, desktop support for instant messaging, document collaboration, and file sharing has yet to be added.
While versions of Zimbra have existed for Windows Mobile, Palm, Symbian, iPhone and other mobile devices, only now has Zimbra released a version of its server that can work with the BlackBerry Enterprise Server and, therefore, BlackBerry devices. Zimbra is only the fourth company, behind Microsoft, Novell, and IBM, to develop compatibility with the BlackBerry server, and the only one to do it without direct assistance from RIM, producer of the BlackBerry. John Robb of Zimbra says that BlackBerry support required a lot of development so that the Zimbra server could emulate Exchange Server and communicate with the BlackBerry server.
Zimbra has passed the 20,000 customers and 11M+ mailboxes marks. Companies can choose to run Zimbra by installing the company’s server package locally or paying a third party to host the software remotely. While Robb says that Zimbra is not focused on providing any hosted solutions soon, it is something that they plan to do in the longer term.
What are the odds of Microsoft keeping an Exchange killer (that too an open source Exchange killer!) alive? If I were a Zimbra customer …
M$ will screw up Zimbra to make you hate it so much that you wish you had deployed Exchange. Then you’ll an offer for discounted Exchange (Home Basic Edition)
Getting it out while they can. if MS gets its hands on Yahoo, then bye-bye zimbra
http://tecnocitizen.blogspot.com/
Its really good application….I was looking for something like this from long time. But, I must say the UI is not that polished and lacks some intuitiveness.
kuldeep, have you seen a better webmail UI?
Not much time left before Zimbra gets turned upside down
Get in quickly before it vanishes off this planet
Simon
Zimba v6.0 = Exchange 2008?
Someone will need to buy this back and save it - how about Google?
I hate seeing that note about black berry support. It’s total BS, which is to say it’s beta and horrible complicated to setup and you need all kinds of weird ass exchange components. It’s not like win mob or palm os that you pretty much just point at the zimbra server.
Also their task implementation is nutty in that it won’t work with mobile devices at all at this point (go figure).
Better then exchange… yes, but you have just as many problems with little resolution type support (it’s always wait for the next patch/version but at least they do crank out the code).
For most stuff to work you need the paid version the open source version is crippleware unless you are only doing webmail
Shamelessly plugging my own wares here, but there are very good alternatives on the market for both Zimbra and Exchange. If you’re interested, just sign up for http://beta.contactoffice.com and tell us what you think.
Fork the OSS version. Perhaps Yahoo! will open-source the paid versions with their last dying gasp, not unlike outgoing governors issuing pardons in their final hours.
I use Zimbra in my office and it’s fantastic! Great web interface and full connectivity with my Outlook. I’m looking forward to using the offline client. Another shameless promotion- if you do need a hosted Zimbra solutions, check out http://www.specialai.com. Their Zimbra packages mold perfectly to the needs of most businesses.
Great enhancements and well done. ;-D
Mark: Your post about Zimbra triggers ideas. As professionals use groupware like Zimbra (whether sold by Yahoo, MS or whomever) to draft and negotiate legal and business transactions, issues will arise regarding record retention and discovery in litigation.
Benjamin (#14), Zimbra Network Edition (the paid product) actually has an archiving and discovery package for this very reason. You can read about it on Zimbra’s Website:
http://www.zimbra.com/products.....iving.html
i was seriously looking at zimbra as part of a solution to migrate to linux, and bam, windows is attempting acquire yahoo who bought zimbra… i’ll be right back in their grips. May have to go with Scalix instead….oh wait, Microsoft cut a deal with their parent Xandros and they are now in cahoots…Arrrrrggghhh