Tuesday, 20 January 2009
Thursday, 15 January 2009
Introducing Zimbra # 1
Introducing Zimbra
The Zimbra Collaboration Suite (ZCS) was developed to provide a reliable, scalable, and cost effective messaging infrastructure that includes:- Integrated anti-spam and anti-virus
- Web and Desktop based email clients
- Comprehensive calendaring
- Contact management
- Document sharing
- Multi-domain support
- Over-the-air synchronization to mobile devices
- Comprehensive search functionality of headers, message body,
- and attachments
- Ability to categorize messages using user-defined "Tags"
Wednesday, 14 January 2009
More than Just Email
Over the last few years, the collaboration market space has become increasingly more competitive. Collaboration Suites focus on creating a messaging infrastructure that not only includes email, but focuses on facilitating communication and collaboration through email, calendar sharing, document sharing, and contact sharing. One thing to keep in mind though, is that the idea of a Collaboration Suite is not new. In fact, these suites have been around for almost as long as email hit the mainstream market.
In the late 1980s, a joint effort between Lotus Development Corporation and Iris Associates produced the first mainstream collaboration suite called Lotus Notes. Not only was Notes a vehicle to send and receive emails, it also allowed for group calendaring (not only being able to use your own calendar but also sharing it with co-workers and handle meeting requests), NNTP news support (the ancestor of the well known web-fora), and instant messaging between clients. As Lotus Notes evolved, it became a cleaner and more robust system. However, it also began experiencing some tough competition from other vendors that were seeing the benefits and the marketability of true Collaboration Suites.
In 1997, Microsoft released version 5.0 of its popular Microsoft Exchange suite that, like Notes, was also more than just email. Along with email services, it offered web-based access and included Microsoft Scheduler+ for group calendaring and scheduling. Through the years, both Notes and Exchange have undergone major version upgrades and continue to add additional functionality with every new release.
Collaboration Suites seem to be coming from all directions and offer many of the
same functionalites as the big players. Although many of these Collaboration Suites have hit the market over the last several years, one has taken the Collaboration Suite market by storm and as of this writing, has over 8 million paid mailbox (plus 12 million for ComCast alone) subscribers and continues to grow at an unprecedented pace. This suite is called Zimbra Collaboration Suite or ZCS.
In the late 1980s, a joint effort between Lotus Development Corporation and Iris Associates produced the first mainstream collaboration suite called Lotus Notes. Not only was Notes a vehicle to send and receive emails, it also allowed for group calendaring (not only being able to use your own calendar but also sharing it with co-workers and handle meeting requests), NNTP news support (the ancestor of the well known web-fora), and instant messaging between clients. As Lotus Notes evolved, it became a cleaner and more robust system. However, it also began experiencing some tough competition from other vendors that were seeing the benefits and the marketability of true Collaboration Suites.
In 1997, Microsoft released version 5.0 of its popular Microsoft Exchange suite that, like Notes, was also more than just email. Along with email services, it offered web-based access and included Microsoft Scheduler+ for group calendaring and scheduling. Through the years, both Notes and Exchange have undergone major version upgrades and continue to add additional functionality with every new release.
Collaboration Suites seem to be coming from all directions and offer many of the
same functionalites as the big players. Although many of these Collaboration Suites have hit the market over the last several years, one has taken the Collaboration Suite market by storm and as of this writing, has over 8 million paid mailbox (plus 12 million for ComCast alone) subscribers and continues to grow at an unprecedented pace. This suite is called Zimbra Collaboration Suite or ZCS.
Tuesday, 13 January 2009
Introducing Zimbra
As time goes by, it is increasingly more difficult to imagine what life was like before email. How did people communicate? I mean truly, how did businesses function? Recently, I was working on an email server at a client's site that had experienced some major hardware failure. Now, this was a small business and there were no cluster servers or hot backup or any of the like, so our only option was to bring the server up with whatever usable backup the company had. The entire ordeal took over two business days to complete, and it was amazing to see how employees were lost without their email. Employees were actually wondering how to communicate with their customers without the use of email. People were making grand plans for using Overnight Mail to send pictures and electronic catalogues out to customers, and trying to figure out how to print and send sales quotes through the fax system, as they could no longer just attach them to an email. Thankfully, the email server was resurrected and I could just sense a huge sigh of relief from the entire company
as life was back to normal.
For the past 15 or so years, email has become a vital tool for all businesses. No matter how large or small an organization, the ability to send and receive emails has become as much a part of our everyday business routines as making a phone call or sending a fax. However, like most tools and technologies, business leaders are constantly looking at new ways to enhance their current systems and ultimately support the needs of the organization. For in the end, isn't it the goal of technology to align itself with the goals of the business and help facilitate growth? All that being said, having just the ability to send and receive emails may not be enough.
as life was back to normal.
For the past 15 or so years, email has become a vital tool for all businesses. No matter how large or small an organization, the ability to send and receive emails has become as much a part of our everyday business routines as making a phone call or sending a fax. However, like most tools and technologies, business leaders are constantly looking at new ways to enhance their current systems and ultimately support the needs of the organization. For in the end, isn't it the goal of technology to align itself with the goals of the business and help facilitate growth? All that being said, having just the ability to send and receive emails may not be enough.
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