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Zimbra Makes Mail Transparent – Could it Replace Outlook Express?
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?
This is one of the big things Google has to be a bit concerned about regarding the potential MSFT/YHOO deal. Sure, Microsoft contends this is all about advertising, but making their mail experience more streamlined, webified, and universal is a real competitor to GMail.
Okay I have to chime in here. I was involved the the process for our company switching to Zimbra – and I have to say it is a fantastic application …er sorry no it’s not.
Zimbra is a Mail Server and it should stay that way. Yes they have a great web interface (although it could do with streamlining it’s very heavy) & their mail systems work very very well. However their Desktop Client is just their web app running in Prism – it’s good but no where near as solid as Outlook or Apple Mail.
Zimbra are a great company for innovation etc – I’ll give them that, but they still haven’t finished the basics. You can’t create & save an HTML formated signature in their web or desktop clients – for corporates with branding in the mail communication that’s a reason to stick with a traditional desktop client.
All in all I do like Zimbra because I can use it with Apple Mail & my Widnows Mobile, that’s the way I like my Mail Servers
I actually think this could be some anti-competitve for Microsoft to by out Yahoo and get Zimbra given that they have both personal and enteprise services that compete directly with Zimbra that well frankly hold a very large market share of those industries. If the sale goes through, the government should force Microsoft spin off Zimbra independently before the acqusition is started.
On top of that, was it not microsoft who called google monopolistic for trying to purchase double click and anti competitive. How is the government going to justify microsoft to make a purchase of Yahoo here.