Zimbra Launches Zimbra Documents and Zimbra Collaboration Suite 4.0

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Tuesday, August 15, 2006; 03:23 AM

Software company Zimbra announced the launch of the Zimbra Collaboration Suite (ZCS) 4.0. ZCS 4.0 includes the launch of Zimbra Documents, a powerful Web 2.0 application for creating, sharing and publishing documents, spreadsheets and folders within an enterprise or organization, across organizational boundaries, among friends and family, or across the Internet. Other new features in ZCS 4.0 include "over the air" synchronization for a wide range of mobile devices (see additional announcement); the ability to customize or "re-skin" the Zimbra user interface with customizable brand, look and feel; and easier management of large-scale enterprise, service provider, academic and government deployments.

Zimbra's AJAX administration interface.

"Zimbra Documents combines the best capabilities of Wikis and Public or Shared Folders," said Satish Dharmaraj, Zimbra co-founder and CEO, "and it is the first solution to also provide easy AJAX authoring from any Web browser and tight integration with other collaboration technologies such as email and shared calendaring. Zimbra Documents is another step in our commitment to allow organizations and service providers to provide access to the same tools and information to all users."

Zimbra Documents allows users to create and share documents and spreadsheets using a simple WYSIWYG editor in the browser, then share them internally, send them in an email, or publish them externally with a simple URL. It is the first application to use the innovative AJAX Linking and Embedding (ALE) technology that Zimbra introduced in April. ALE is the first Web authoring solution to allow one document to be embedded within another, such as adding a spreadsheet to an HTML page. Additionally, Zimbra Documents includes access control lists (ACLs) to allow users to set permissions so that a group can view or edit content. Zimbra Documents also supports the Zimlet technology, whereby alternative Intranet applications and Internet Web services can be integrated or "mashed-up" within the document. Finally, Zimbra Documents includes the entire rich index, searching, and archiving capabilities that are core to the entire Zimbra Collaboration Suite.

"Zimbra Documents is uniquely well suited to ad-hoc collaboration," said Scott Dietzen, CTO of Zimbra. "If I want to privately get together with Satish to create some new content, it's much easier to simply send him an email invitation to share a secure Zimbra Wiki page with me than it is to configure a private collaboration space in some other technology or pass documents back and forth over email, and having to worry about collating changes, security, viruses, and so on. And when we're done, we can put the result in an email, add it into a departmental Wiki, or post it on the Internet."

The ZCS 4.0 Open Source Edition is free. The commercially-supported ZCS Network Edition is available for a 60-day free trial on the Zimbra Website. ZCS 4.0 Network Edition pricing starts at $25/mailbox/year for a minimum of 25 users for the Standard Edition, which includes product support as well as software subscriptions to new releases, updates and patches.

ZCS 4.0 Key Features

     --   Zimbra Mobile;
     --   Delegated access for sharing calendar, email and contacts within
          Microsoft(TM) Outlook(TM); via the Zimbra Connector for Microsoft
          Outlook;
     --   Sharing address books in the Web client and in Outlook;
     --   The ability to create new user interface "themes" that provide for
          the customization and rebranding of the Zimbra experience;
     --   Auto-complete of addresses from the Global Address list (GAL) even
          if the GAL is in an external directory;
     --   Advanced keyboard navigation that supports the arrow keys, delete,
          and so on within the Zimbra AJAX client within the Web browser;
     --   Zimbra Assistant to quickly launch a command-line window to create a
          contact, view a map, view your calendar and more;
     --   Enhanced support for "multi-tenancy" -- the hosting and managing of
          large numbers of domains within a set of Zimbra servers (critical
          for hosted service providers and Software as a Service/SaaS); and
     --   Tools through which service providers can deliver content-specific
          advertising and up sell content-specific services (whether from the
          service provider itself or via its affiliates).

ZCS 4.0 also includes the following features supported in previous editions:

     --   Browser-based Web 2.0/AJAX client for email, address book, and
          calendar that provides search, sharing, tagging, and archiving;
     --   Support for Microsoft Outlook, including on-line and off-line (or
          cached) mode;
     --   Support for Windows, Apple and Linux computers;
     --   Unified Voice over IP (VoIP) support that allows users to quickly
          launch calls, conference calls and to access voice mail from within
          the Zimbra Collaboration Suite;
     --   Zimlets technology for Web services integration with existing
          enterprise applications and Internet Web services;
     --   Online mailbox migration, backup and recovery of individual or a
          group of mailboxes;
     --   Integrated anti-spam and anti-virus;
     --   Easy integration with Microsoft Active Directory and other LDAP
          directories; and
     --   Native hierarchical storage management and clustering for fault
          tolerance.