Zimbra rolled across 200 US universities

More Than 200 Educational Institutions Select Zimbra in One Year

This was the headline from the zimbra website.
To view the article see the official press release

Since yahoo! acquired in 2007, Zimbra has been going from strength to strength. This seems to be a clever strategy from the guys and girls from Zimbra to ensure that the product becomes a household name.

Now I don't know which universities Zimbra is being rolled out to (it lists a few) but we are talking about a vast number of mailboxes (talking millions).

The rationale behind this move I expect is "When these students think email, they are going to think Zimbra." It will be interesting to see how this pans out...

Impala - Zimbra Mail has landed!

We are very excited about our latest venture.
At last, an email collaboration suite which truly reflects where technology is going.
Zimbra Mail is superb. Using the suite within my browser (Firefox running in Ubuntu Linux) is an absolute joy. It is just well thought through.

I think the problem with other collaboration suites is that they seem a bit clunky. Yes, they do the job but often you feel like you are wading through the mire to get what you're looking for.
Zimbra Mail is different. There is something clean and neat about it. Like a piece of Agile software. It runs very very quickly. I suppose this could be a major contribution to it running so well on so many platforms, and also why it can be easily integrated.

Anyway, I could continue typing. Trying to describe how breath takingly beautiful Zimbra Mail is until the cows come home.
But You have to see it for yourself........

Which Content Management System?

At my company http://www.worthers.com we have developed our own content management system. It works very well, is very flexible and it is the backbone for many of the sites we have developed.
The problem with it is that it is completely in house.
Only a handful of people know how it works and how to develop with it. Even though it is extremely powerful and flexible, I wouldn't say it was very easy to use.

This is one of the reasons why I am exploring some alternatives.
The main ones I am looking at are Joomla and Drupal.

From what I can see, Joomla is extremely easy to use. Very powerful and offers some very useful modules you can plug into it. These include diaries and even online stores.

Drupal seems much more powerful in terms of flexibility but more difficult to use.

Out of the two, Drupal seems the more professional to me (based on preliminary inspection) but I am basing that on very little knowledge.

I am looking forward to getting my hands dirty with Drupal. I will let you know how I get on.

Using Zimbra - A mail perspective

Exchange vs Zimbra?

I was tied into using Windows XP. I didn't want to use it. I didn't enjoy using it.
I found it messy and slow. It would take about a week for it to boot up. (more like 10 minutes but enough time to make a coffee and drink it) And then after installing some updates for who knows what(!?!), kept asking me to reboot!!!!
(gasp!!)
I was longing to use a different platform. Something not so Microsoft. Something a little more stable. Sadly, I couldn't. I was tied it. Because we were using hosted exchange, it meant that I had to use 'Internet Explorer' or 'Outlook'. I had to use 'Microsoft!!!' (I later found out that I could have installed these in my current Ubuntu installation but that's another story!).

Zimbra vs Exchange???

Zimbra works like a dream. Which I am very happy about as our company is in the process of offering it as a service. Take a look at Zimbra and what we offer. You won't be disappointed. I certainly am not. And I challenge some Windows users to mix it up a bit. Try Ubuntu Linux. You can download this freely and even install it within Windows if you want to trial it. In the long run however it is probably best to either make a partition and install it properly there or use the whole hard-drive but the latter will wipe out your windows installation.

I thought I would show you a matrix showing how what a killer app Zimbra is.

(This Zimbra collaboration information is Used with permission)

Feature	Zimbra Hosting	Exchange Hosting
Use your own domain name	Yes	Yes
Domain Admin / User set up & management	Yes	Yes
Maximum quota (GB/mailbox)	Unlimited(extra cost for more GB/month)	Depends on provider
Secure chat (xmpp, stored)	Yes	No
Task list sharing	Yes	Yes
File sharing	Yes	No
Document sharing and versioning	Yes	No
Email folder sharing	Yes	Yes
iPhone webmail, calendar and contact support	Yes	No
Contact sharing	Yes	Yes
Calendar sharing	Yes	Yes
Data Portability (moving your data to another solution)	Open-standards based	Limited. Proprietary
Native support for Mac,Windows & Linux users	Yes. Business hosting	No
Wiki / Document Sharing	Yes. Business hosting	No
Global Address List (GAL) - Company Address Book	Included	Included
Free/busy checking for group calendaring	Included	Included
Resources (IE: conference rooms, projectors)	Yes	Yes
Server-side Anti-Spam/Anti-Virus	Optional	Depends on provider
Desktop Sync Support (Outlook, Mail.app, iCal, etc.)	Included	Outlook only
Blackberry OTA sync (email, calendar, contacts)	Optional	Optional
Built-in Archiving & Discovery (SOX) Solution	Optional.	No
Windows Mobile & Palm sync (email, calendar, contacts)	Optional	Optional
Web 2.0 Mash-up framework (Zimlets)	Included	No
Web Identities	Included	No
External POP & IMAP	Yes (IMAP too, Version 5)	Yes
Distribution Lists (mailing lists)	Unlimited	Unlimited
Aliases	Unlimited	10
Email auto-responders	User configurable	Yes
Private event option in calendars	Yes	Yes
Keyboard/navigation web short-cuts	Yes	No
WebDav compliant file sharing (desktop & web!)	Yes	No
Fast online search - including attachments!	Yes	No
CalDav compliant calendaring	Yes	No

Discovering Ubuntu

The year of the penguin

2009 is the year of the penguin for me at Worthers. (actually I think that today is the Chinese year of the Bull but that's another story)
Our company has switched from "Hosted Exchange" to "Hosted Zimbra". One of the advantages of this over Exchange is that it can run in non Microsoft software.
What a perfect opportunity to make the switch from Windows to Ubuntu, and I haven't looked back. (Well just a little to copy a bit of info now and then!!)
So far so good.

Zimbra

Zimbra is a bit like Exchange only nicer. It has most of the same basic features. Ie Mail collaboration, calendar, todo etc but everything is just that bit more user friendly.
Check Zimbra out for more information. It is a really nice tool and you wont be disappointed. I will write a more extensive review about it when I have a bit of time.