October 14, 2005 Zimbra Offers Feature-Rich E-Mail Client By Barbara Darrow Courtesy of Zimbra is betting that the world is ready for a feature-rich e-mail service that costs less than Microsoft Exchange Server or Lotus Domino. The Network Edition of Zimbra Collaboration Suite offers robust multitenancy capabilities so resellers and ISPs can host multiple clients on pooled servers safely and securely, said Scott Dietzen, president and CTO of the San Mateo, Calif., company. “There’s a big business around hosted Exchange, but it’s expensive to deploy and license, and resellers can’t rebrand it as their own,” he said. Speakeasy, a Seattle-based provider of managed broadband mail/VoIP and other services for business and residential use, is taking a look at the service, according to Danny Pickford, vice president of technology. “One big plus is it’s completely cross-platform inherently, which widens the marketplace. It integrates quite well with other products, including Exchange,” Pickford said. Second, Zimbra uses the AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) programming technique for building lightweight but rich interactive applications. “It’s slick and feature-rich, especially when you realize it’s managed from the Web app without the need for a large, monolithic desktop client,” Pickford said. Zimbra’s open-source tools and frameworks are also a plus, because Speakeasy’s staff understands the technology, he said. “We have the ability to get into it deep, understand it well and control how we upgrade and manage it. That’s very attractive,” Pickford said. Zimbra fields a dual product strategy, with a free version and a commercial version. The latter—which adds cross-mailbox search, discovery and indexing of attachments, support and fixes—sells for $30 per mailbox per year. Zimbra also claims that its server reduces managed storage overhead with its use of a single-copy message store. The product’s “active messaging” concept aims to “mash up” e-mail with Web-based services. For example, users hovering over an address in a message can be sent to Google Maps for directions. Mousing-over and right-clicking on a FedEx order number brings up the order status. Mousing-over and right-clicking on a VoIP link launches the VoIP soft phone service that’s activated on that PC, said John Robb, vice president of marketing and product management at Zimbra. VARs and ISPs can facilitate these Web links by writing to Zimbra APIs. Zimbra supports common mail and collaboration protocols, including MAPI and ICAL. Users can continue to use their familiar Apple Mail, Evolution or Eudora mail clients or opt for Zimbra’s own AJAX-based client. E-mail This Story Print This Story Get the latest Messaging news, product info, and trends every week.			Content Management Made Easy With Xerox New Mirapoint Program Touts MSP Tricks Vendors, VARs Pushing Secure IM As Necessity IBM Goal: IM Interop Across The Board RIM Says BlackBerry Work-Around Ready If Needed Opinion: Unified messaging | What's Old Is New     Messaging Pipeline's Main RSS Feed     Messaging Pipeline's Blog RSS Feed Editorial and vendor perspectives The Six Flavors Of Windows Vista Microsoft plans to release a full six-pack of Vista versions, one for every taste. Which Vista will be right for you? Hope is Not Enough When It Comes To Compliance Three Ways To Authenticate E-Mail And Stop Spam Wikis In The Workplace Review: Google Desktop 3 Vendors are now talking about how collaboration can be improved by integrating video with messaging applications. They're even talking about adding live TV to mobile phones. How far do you go before it becomes a bandwidth and business productivity drain? Video is a great idea     13% Video is fine but there needs to be size limits     25% It's never used for anything really productive     38% I draw the line at live TV     25% In search of messaging products? Check out our brand new Product Finder for a directory of groupware and collaboration tools, security products, archiving solutions, and more.