Zimbra Archive

Yahoo’s Zimbra email product offering has announced this morning that their Collaboration Suite is now available to educational institutions using the Zimbra Hosted platform. Basically the Zimbra Hosted platform puts the Collaboration Suite into the cloud and removes the need for local server hosting.

Zimbra Hosted utilizes Yahoo!’s worldwide infrastructure and provides customers with 99.9 percent guaranteed uptime, 24/7 support and built-in disaster recovery service level agreements (SLA). Pricing is still based on number of mailboxes and selected features. The company says they offer discounts for educational institutions.

Zimbra already has 400+ educational institutions using their Collaboration Suite locally. You can check out the full feature list here. A big difference from the crappy web-only email client we used when I completed my MBA in 2005.

Zimbra is probably one of the few companies that are creating innovation and are cranking out a great product but aren’t heard from often. Zimbra was acquired by Yahoo last September for $350 million.

Yesterday I spoke with marketing VP John Robb about their progress and to discuss their latest product: Zimbra Desktop. When I used the word transparent in the title of this column, it’s because no matter what device (computer, mobile, desktop, Web) you use Zimbra with, the experience is as close to identical as possible.

Robb says that Zimbra has 20,000 enterprise customers and over 11 million network mailboxes not including Comcast.

We mainly spoke about the new desktop client which is built on top of Mozilla’s Prism service. I’ve been playing with it yesterday and today and it’s very slick. Frankly, it puts traditional desktop email clients to shame. There are some ties back to Yahoo for search and Robb says this is one of their monetization strategies. The majority of their revenue comes from the enterprise customers. I’ve posted a screenshot of the desktop client below which shows how it has a similar feel to Outlook and is more Webified by using Yahoo services where possible.

The Zimbra Desktop works with pop/imap/etc so you can use it with your ISP email. And making it even stronger, you can download add-ons called "Zimlets". Robb notes that the Zimbra Desktop is a competitor to Thunderbird, Entourage, Outlook and Eudora.

If the deal between Microsoft and Yahoo goes through, could Zimbra become the new Outlook Express inside Windows?

Comcast has announced that they are creating the "industry's first fully integrated, Web-based communications center". Powered by companies including Plaxo and Zimbra, the service will be available for their triple play (voice, cable, internet) customers.

"With the SmartZone communications center, we continue to provide superior value to Triple Play customers by putting a suite of communications tools right at their fingertips. From one central dashboard, they will now be able to manage email, voicemail and personal contacts and customize their experience," said Greg Butz, Senior Vice President, Product Development for Comcast.

I have used both Plaxo and Zimbra and am very impressed with their services. Plaxo states they have over 15 million members (of course people may have multiple accounts) and Zimbra just passed the 6 million paid mailbox mark. This should certainly boost the counts for both services by a good margin.

On the flip side, as a Comast Internet customer since 1998, I have never used their home page nor their email service. So while it may work for some, I most likely won't see a benefit. In addition, you really need to have their phone service to take advantage of some of the features including the visual voicemail.

HP, Bizanga, Cloudmark and Trend Micro are also part of the new communications center.

Some of the features from the Comcast release include:

• Easily merge their contacts into one Universal Address Book that synchronizes all of their online address books into one and is accessible from multiple Web-enabled devices.
• Send Instant Messages and Video Instant Messages that enable customers to connect with friends and contacts online in real time.
• Personalize their SmartZone communications centers with other features like weather, news reports and video clips.
• View, send and receive email integrated with voice mail, all on one, easy-to-navigate Web page.
• Experience "Visual" Voice Mail, which means customers can listen to their voicemails online and forward voice mail messages via email to anyone. Customers can also save and manage Call Logs just like they can with email.

The customized, personalized home page space is hot again. I can't believe I am saying that after the late '90s and the "portals" – it is a bit interesting that none of the big players, Netvibes, yourminis, etc. call themselves a portal. Since Comcast already has a large "former AOL" base of users as they move from dial-up to cable modems, this should prove a positive upgrade. I wonder if Comcast will force the start page to their users at some point in the future? Save $5 on your monthly bill if you use comcast.net as your start page?