Zimbra Collaboration Suite 5.0

Zimbra Collaboration Suite (ZCS) 5.0 is a truly modern, innovative messaging and collaboration application. Zimbra is the leading open source solution for enterprise, service provider, education, and government environments; offering administrators and their end-users unmatched benefits. It’s no wonder Zimbra is a popular choice for today’s growing Mac and Linux email server base. It has been recently bought by Yahoo!

ZCS Server supports various clients:
– Advanced Web Client (AJAX)
– Zimbra Desktop
– Standard Web Client (HTML)
– Outlook 2003, 2007 (MAPI)
– Apple Desktop
– iPhone
– Blackberry
– Standard Phones (J2ME)
– Symbian, Palm

The unique open source Zimlet technology makes it easy to include custom ‘mash-ups’ in the ZCS web client. Zimlets are a mechanism for integrating the Zimbra Collaboration Suite (ZCS) with third party information systems and content as well as creating “mash-up” user interfaces within the Zimbra suite itself. Zimlets save end users time by condensing common tasks, which typically force them to open multiple applications, into simple contextual ones within ZCS– such mashing up calendar information to appear within the email.
Zimbra has both Network Edition and an Open Source Edition. Comparisons between Zimbra CS editions can be found here.

Apparently Microsoft has given a competitive breakdown of Microsoft Exchange versus Zimbra, and candidly admits Zimbra’s superiority in several areas. You can see the web page at the link given here:
Zimbra Collaboration Suite 4.0 vs. Exchange Server 2007
Its as partner only document, but I got some insider information from some posts on internet.

Microsoft lists several Zimbra strengths that sound much more compelling than its defense of Exchange 2007:

* The open-source-software components [used by Zimbra] are proven solutions by themselves, many with large existing user bases (MySQL, OpenLDAP, Apache, PHP, SpamAssassin).
* Its’ class of service architecture allows for simple tiered access to services.
* Searching via their Web interface is fast and robust (AJAX query builder).
* The Verity HTML converter allows for fast rendering of 200 documents to HTML.
* Zimlets, can provide a more interactive user experience compared to the Microsoft equivalent of SmartTags.
* The Documents solution provides integrated wiki-document sharing with powerful embedded document features.
* The AJAX interface is pleasing and has a “wow” factor due to speed and Zimlets. Additionally, its’ interface is identical across Internet Explorer/Firefox/Opera.

Latest Update: Zimbra Collaboration Suite 7.0 Open Source Edition Beta 1 Available Now!
http://www.zimbra.com/downloads/os-betas-downloads.html