September 30th, 2009
Zimbra launches new suite; Hits 50 million paid email accounts
Zimbra on Wednesday launched a new collaboration suite and said it hit the 50 million paid mailbox mark.
The open source email and collaboration software provider, a unit of Yahoo for now, called the Zimbra Collaboration Suite 6.0 its “most significant upgrade” and rolled out a bevy of new features (statement, Zimbra blog, feature list). Zimbra is used by more than 100,000 organizations including companies like Bechtel, Comcast and WebMD and a host of government agencies and colleges and universities.
Given chatter about Yahoo potentially offloading Zimbra the statement provides a few curious tidbits. On one hand, Zimbra plays up its momentum and rapid growth (read: we’re a valuable asset to a buyer) yet notes how its features are integrated into Yahoo Mail’s overhaul (read: we’re not going anywhere).
Among the key features in the latest collaboration suite:
- Three pane e-mail view, separate tabs to compose email, new calendar functionality and a zoom-in view of appointments. Zimbra also improved file and sharing management and various filters.
- There’s mobile device management and remote device wiping capability. Zimbra also added the ability to search the global address list from a mobile device.
- Administrator perks including role-delegation, access rights and various permission management schemes.
- Third-party integration for mashups. A Zimlet tab allows third parties to add applications.
- Zimbra also aggregates Facebook and Twitter updates in a hand screen.
Zimbra noted that it picked its new features based on user requests. In a blog post, Zimbra noted:
ZCS 6.0 is chock full of everything you asked for - because we made sure to check off the hit list of top requests. Our goal was also to make ZCS 6.0 the most flexible product yet, so we’ve also made it easier than ever to integrate 3rd party software.
Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of ZDNet and Editorial Director of ZDNet sister site TechRepublic. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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