Zimbra Demonstrates Growing Momentum With Universities

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Wednesday, June 7, 2006; 08:08 AM

Zimbra announced that a number of higher education institutions -- in
United States and internationally -- have chosen the Zimbra Collaboration
Suite (ZCS) to meet their email and calendaring needs. This momentum
reflects the success of the company's market expansion, as well as demand
within the education vertical for innovative and cost effective messaging
solutions like Zimbra's flagship product, the Zimbra Collaboration Suite
(ZCS).
    "We're thrilled with the response of the education community to
Zimbra," said Scott Dietzen, Zimbra's CTO. "We've innovated to solve the
unique user and administrator problems at universities, and are happy to
offer a product scalable to tens of thousands of mailboxes, which is
compatible with a broad range of desktops -- including Windows and Macs --
and which provides a first-class messaging and collaboration experience."
    "One of the key factors in our choice of an email and calendaring
product was the ability to cost effectively deploy the technology campus
wide," said Greg DeYoung, Associate Director for Campus Infrastructure
Technology, Eastern Illinois University. "We were confident in Zimbra's
ability to support both Macs and PCs on a large scale at a compelling TCO,
which made the decision an easy one. Further, the ZCS has enabled us to
differentiate between classes of service, supporting Microsoft Outlook and
Apple iSync for faculty and providing a compelling AJAX client for
students."
    In addition to offering a number of vital attributes to business
customers, the ZCS offers a range of key benefits to education customers,
including:
    -- Varying class of service specifications for students, faculty and staff
    -- Ease of scalability
    -- Ability to support Outlook, Apple iSync and other offline clients
    -- Compatibility with a number of operating systems
    -- Innovative, open source platform
    -- Rich Web 2.0/Ajax user interface for end-users
    -- Over the air syncing of Windows Mobile phones (Treo 650 and more)
    -- Strong Internet-based security (SSL/TLS for all protocols)
    -- Extensibility via Zimlets and Web services for creating mash-ups
    "We selected the Zimbra Collaboration Suite because it is a perfect
match for our needs and it has a compelling total cost of ownership," said
Rick Holbert, Linux System Manager, Ohio State University's Center for
Human Resource Research. "From basic messaging functionality to browser,
mobile and offline client support like Outlook and Apple clients the
technology gave us what we needed now, and promised ease of growth in the
future."
    Other Zimbra agreements with higher education institutions around the
world include:
    -- Saint Vincent College
    -- Universidad Francisco Marroquin, Guatemala
    -- Harvey Mudd College
    -- United World College of South East Asia, Singapore
    -- University of Delaware Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry
    -- Delaware State University
    "In our search for a new collaboration system, we evaluated a number of
options -- from proprietary systems like Microsoft Exchange to Zimbra's
open source alternative -- and in the end, Zimbra was the obvious choice,"
said Manoel Oliveira, Director of IT, Florida International University
College of Business Administration. "We educate the brightest and best
students here, and we need an innovative collaboration system to match."