Zimbra Blog

Smartsheet Adoption On the Rise – Check It Out

Posted in Community, Open Source, Partners, Zimlets by Andrew Hawthorn on November 11th, 2011

Our partners at Smartsheet just passed their one year anniversary of launching an integration with VMware Zimbra.  And looking back, we’ve seen a strong increase in Zimbra users embracing the online project management and collaboration app.  In fact, Smartsheet continues to be a favorite, now ranking as a “Top 5 Most Popular App” in the Zimbra Zimlet Gallery. Smartsheet now claims more than 100 joint customers with Zimbra!

For Zimbra users, Smartsheet serves as the perfect union between spreadsheets, project tools and file sharing. While most work projects take shape as a spreadsheet, they break down when you need to get others involved. There’s no way to easily track versions, much less associate notes, share files, set reminders and so forth. Smartsheet allows Zimbra users to keep the spreadsheet layout you like (and already know how to use) and gain the additional automation you need.

For Smartsheet, the momentum is exciting because Zimbra customers typically represent larger enterprise deployments and provide a higher average contribution to the bottom line. That’s smart business.

Why the uptick in momentum?
In addition to solving a real business need, here are a few other reasons that contribute to the popularity of the combined solution:

  • Extends the functionality of both apps. The apps are a natural fit. You can show key project dates in Zimbra or overlay a Zimbra calendar directly to a project calendar in Smartsheet. In one click, you can import Zimbra contacts into Smartsheet for easy collaborating and sharing sheets. You can also attach documents from Zimbra briefcase to any row. The apps make each other more useful, valuable.
  • Convenient access. With Smartsheet available as a tab within Zimbra, access is seamless and easy. No more having to navigate to a separate web application.
  • Scales for enterprise. The combination of Smartsheet’s cloud app being “always available” with the viral nature of “sharing sheets” causes adoption to spread organically across the organization. And because it’s so flexible to set up and use, we’re seeing teams from project management to marketing, operations, HR processes, and sales pipelines, all embrace the tool. After all, everyone has work to manage.
  • Provides admin controls and security safeguards required by larger organizations. Most simple web apps don’t offer provisioning controls at a centralized level. Smartsheet is “enterprise ready”, providing group tools for onboarding and monitoring users, transferring ownership of content and managing data access. Providing the ability to self-manage the deployment and ongoing maintenance of accounts and content is definitely one of the must-haves for apps to succeed in larger settings.

Thank you Zimbra community. While Smartsheet’s momentum encourages us, we understand we’ve just scratched the surface. We’re committed to working closely with Smartsheet — and all of our integration partners — to create more value for VMware Zimbra customers.



Join VMware Zimbra in Philadelphia, PA at EDUCAUSE 2011

Posted in Community, Education, News, Partners by Greg Armanini on October 11th, 2011

We are looking forward to seeing everyone at this year’s EDUCAUSE 2011 Conference in Philadelphia!  We have a lot to share with you this year as we continue in our mission to deliver technologies and infrastructure that enhance the way people work in the post-PC era.

We’re especially excited to show you a sneak peek of what is coming in ZCS 8.0 and an early preview of our new file sharing application, Project Octopus.  And, we’d like to invite you to our VMware Cocktail Reception on Tuesday evening.  This year we’ll be in historic downtown Philadelphia at Del Frisco’s.  Also, please stop by and see us in booth #1439.


VMware Zimbra Roadmap Presentation on Tuesday, 10/18 at 2:30 PM

Please join us for the Zimbra Roadmap Presentation on Tuesday, October 18th at 2:30 PM.  During this Roadmap presentation, you will learn more about the exciting new features being developed for our biggest release ever, ZCS 8.0! You’ll get a sneak peek at some of the new features including priority inbox, social mail, calendars with activity streams and new self-service administration tools. You will also get an early preview of our new secure, cloud-based file sharing application, Project Octopus, designed to transform the way people collaborate.

Space is limited, please RSVP by Friday, October 14th to reserve your seat.

Date and Time:
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
2:30-4 PM

Location:
Maggiano’s Little Italy
Napoli Room
1201 Filbert Street
Philadelphia, PA 19107
215-567-2020




VMware Cocktail Reception on Tuesday, October 18 at 6:30 PM

You are cordially invited to the VMware Cocktail Reception on Tuesday, October 18th in Philadelphia, PA.  This year, we have selected a great spot in the heart of the Center City Philadelphia at Del Frisco’s in the historical First Pennsylvania Bank Building. We look forward to spending an evening with great friends over cocktails and Hors d’oeuvres!

Space is limited so please RSVP by Friday, October 14th.

Date and Time:
Tuesday, October 18
6:30-8:00 PM

Location:
Del Frisco’s
1426 Chestnut Street
Philadelphia, PA 19102
215-246-0533


Visit VMware Zimbra Booth #1439

We’ll be showcasing ZCS and Project Octopus, along with demos of the other VMware products like View, Fusion, vSphere and SlideRocket.

We thank you for your continued support and feedback and we look forward to seeing you in Philadelphia!



VMware Zimbra Enhances Enterprise Security with Proofpoint Integration

Posted in News, Partners, Zimbra Server, Zimlets by Greg Armanini on September 20th, 2011

Gartner Email Security 2011 Magic Quadrant

We’re pleased today Proofpoint, an industry leader in security and compliance solutions for enterprise messaging, announced they’ve integrated their Enterprise Protection™ and Enterprise Privacy™ solutions with VMware Zimbra Collaboration Server v7 .  This integration offers Zimbra customers access to advanced anti-spam, regulatory compliance, email encryption and data loss prevention capabilities.
Proofpoint worked with the Zimbra team to custom-engineer the integration of its solutions to provide users with maximum protection.  Features include:

  • An virtual appliance with machine learning technology that delivers 99.8%+ anti-spam effectiveness against all types of spam and phishing attacks
  • Direct integration within the Zimbra UI- users may mark messages “spam” or “not spam” and the feedback provides additional tuning to the Proofpoint service in real-time
  • Securely send encrypted messages within Zimbra through a Proofpoint Zimlet extension (available in Zimbra 7.1.3)
  • Administrators may enable robust outbound filtering in Zimbra on messages for data loss prevention and privacy compliance

Special Introductory Offers

As part of the launch, Proofpoint is offering qualified Zimbra Network Edition customers a free one-year subscription to its Proofpoint Enterprise Protection virtual appliance.

The Proofpoint team is also offering new Zimbra customers a free 60-day trial to its Enterprise Privacy virtual appliance.

Visit www.proofpoint.com/zimbra to learn more.


The Zimbra team is excited to add Proofpoint to our growing and open ecosystem; it’s another example of how Zimbra partners and customers can easily integrate with the Zimbra Collaboration Server via our open APIs and Zimlet framework.  Learn more by checking out the Zimbra Gallery and Community over over 45,000 members.

Stay tuned in future months as we make available other integrated offerings in such areas as security, mobility, storage, unified communications, and cloud management of Zimbra.



VMworld Technology Preview: Project Octopus

Posted in Community, News by Greg Armanini on August 30th, 2011

As we continue in our mission to develop technologies and infrastructure that improve the way people work in this post-PC era, we are previewing at VMworld Las Vegas a new file sharing app – Project Octopus – that advances our vision for combining end-user freedom with IT control.

Project Octopus will enable users to access files from any device and share them with people both inside (other colleagues) and outside (vendors, customers, partners) their companies in a completely safe and secure way.  Additionally, IT leaders will have control to apply access and security policies and intelligently manage data that is old or out of date.

In our research, we found that 80 percent of files in a collaboration system are not accessed after more than two years. Octopus will automatically identify these orphaned files, warn their owners, and if it never hears back, it expires those files and deletes them.

Project Octopus promises to be super easy to deploy; it plugs in to your existing infrastructure and will come with a wide range of extensibility options that can integrate with your existing business applications. Also Octopus will work with other products within the VMware End-user Computing portfolio including VMware Zimbra, VMware View, VMware Horizon and Project AppBlast.

It really addresses the challenges that IT has today…users need a way to easily and quickly access their files on their tablets, smart phones, laptops and home desktops and do this in a way that’s safe and secure.

If you are interested in participating in the upcoming beta of Project Octopus, go to vmwareoctopus.com and enter your email address.  Keep checking back on the End-User Computing blog for updates.



Visit Zimbra at VMworld 2011

Posted in Community, Education, News, Partners by Donna Kuker on August 17th, 2011

August 29-September 1 at The Venetian in Las Vegas
October 18-20, Bella Center, Copenhagen

We are just three weeks away from VMworld 2011 and we are looking forward to showcasing Zimbra products, including a sneak peek of ZCS 8 and some new products we are working on!

VMworld 2011 is a great way to learn about the latest technology innovations with more than 175 breakout sessions and labs-featuring topics that will cover everything from virtualizing business critical applications to integrating social collaboration tools that enhance productivity.  Plus, VMworld offers additional learning opportunities, such as the Knowledge Experts Program, numerous networking events, and the Solutions Exchange, featuring over 250 companies.

Whether you’re new to VMworld or have attended before, VMworld 2011 is a great way to learn about the latest technology innovations and network with your peers and industry experts.  And, you won’t want to miss this year’s party with the band, The Killers!

Below is a list of the Zimbra activities that we have planned. If you have not already registered and you would like to attend this year’s event, click on the link below to get to the registration page.  We hope to see you at VMworld 2011 in Las Vegas!

Speaking & Group Sessions

  1. VMware Zimbra: Next Generation Collaboration for Your Cloud: John Robb & Sam Khavari
  2. Plan, Build and Deliver a VMware Zimbra Cloud Application Business: Jing To & Azdio Ballesteros
  3. VMware Zimbra: Better Than Exchange: Jon Dybik
  4. Zimbra the New SMB Game Changer: Paul Murphy
  5. Zimbra Group Discussion: John Robb

Education & Hands-on Lab

  1. Exploring your Core Email and Collaboration Services Migration Options: Anup Patwardhan & Azdio Ballesteros

VMware Booth

  • Product Demos in the VMware Booth Genius Bar
  • Theater presentations
  • Meet the team!

To register for VMworld click here!



VMware Zimbra Collaboration Server 7.1 is Released

Posted in Community, News, Zimbra Server by Jon Dybik on April 7th, 2011

Exciting news! We’ve just release VMware Zimbra Collaboration Server 7.1 and I thought I’d take a few minutes to explain the details behind the release.

Some may have been expecting a typical maintenance release (i.e. 7.0.2), and 7.1 is primarily comprised of the bug fixes and enhancements you would expect in any maintenance release from Zimbra. So why the special 7.1 version? We’ve done some important plumbing to set the stage for a few new features coming later in the year as well as added internationalization enhancements to improve localization for Japanese customers.

What are these new future features you ask? Namely, S/MIME encryption and support for smartcard authentication. I know many in the community have noticed the activity in Bugzilla around S/MIME, so we’ve reved the minor version to indicate a sign of good things to come. The release however does not include any changes in behavior or big ticket features that you need to spend weeks figuring out in a lab. So all you 6.0.x and 7.0.1 customers, 7.1 is your next install.

Here are a few important links to more information and the actual bits themselves.


Release Notes




VMware Zimbra Enterprise Messaging Embraces NetApp NFS

Posted in News, PowerTips - Admins, Virtualization, Zimbra Server by Charles Windom on March 4th, 2011

Today’s messaging and collaboration systems must be highly reliable: end users need access to email and calendaring 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Designing a reliable messaging and collaboration environment entails choosing the proper storage, server and operating system. Many of us employ storage area networks (SANs) to provide that storage reliability, but SANs require specialized expertise to manage.

Today, VMware Zimbra is releasing a new whitepaper detailing our testing of Zimbra with support for NetApp Network File-based Storage (NFS) and VMware vSphere, a significant competitive advantage over other email and collaboration systems. Zimbra 7 takes a new, innovative approach towards messaging and collaboration.

File-based storage gives customers additional flexibility, scalability and cost savings when designing and deploying a messaging system. Listed below are just some of the benefits of using file-based storage for your enterprise email deployments:

Flexibility – At least 80% of enterprise customers are running a heterogeneous storage infrastructure that includes NFS as part of that storage infrastructure. Customers want the choice of Network Attached Storage. The VMware Zimbra Collaboration Server supports all of the available options for storage including NFS, SAS/SATA, Fibre Channel, and iSCSI. Other messaging and collaboration products such as Microsoft Exchange, Notes and GroupWise don’t support or have withdrawn their support for file-based storage or NFS. However, when deployed on vSphere, ZCS also supports Network Attached Storage (NAS) for all of its components. We are the only messaging product that supports the use of NAS.   See the new features in Zimbra 7.

Scalability – With file-based storage you can dynamically grow or shrink vSphere datastores up to 16TB. Deploying a virtualized Zimbra Collaboration Server means that you can just create an additional virtual disk file, add it to the virtual mailbox server and grow the logical volume and you have increased the mailbox store. For service providers and hosting services moving their services into the cloud, file-based storage provides significant operational, cost and management reduction. See how Zimbra 7 integrates with cloud computing.

Cost Savings – In all scenarios file-based storage represents cost savings across the board in management, upfront acquisition costs and maintenance. Forrester conducted a study of 7 large customers using or considering the use of file-based storage and found that the cost savings over three years was greater 50 percent. In medium to large organizations, fibre channel directors, edge switches, host bus adapters (HBAs) and cabling can cost in the hundreds of thousands of dollars not to mention the cost of maintaining these infrastructures. File-based storage uses the existing networking infrastructure that organizations are most familiar with. No need to deploy a separate storage infrastructure to support the organizations applications.

VMware Zimbra NetApp

The VMware Zimbra team partnered with NetApp to create an enterprise test environment consisting of vSphere, Zimbra and NetApp storage that easily scales to 100,000 users. The test results are very encouraging: NAS performed on par with Fibre Channel. View the NetApp and VMware vSphere Best Practices TR-3749 at http://media.netapp.com/documents/tr-3749.pdf

The combination of VMware vSphere and NetApp file-based storage means:

  • Full support for virtualization and all of vSphere’s advanced features (vMotion, Storage vMotion, DRS)
  • Simplified high availability through the use of VMware HA
  • Server consolidation (reduced datacenter footprint, reduced power and cooling and a dynamically balanced workload )

Zimbra Collaboration Server is designed to scale and perform reliably in enterprise as well as off-premise deployments. When deployed using the VMware vSphere platform one can design a highly reliable and scalable messaging and collaboration environment that can take advantage of vSphere’s benefits of DRS, vMotion, storage vMotion and the ability to simplify management and availability. For more information on VMware vSphere see http://www.vmware.com/solutions/datacenter/

Get more information by registering for the Webinar on April 27th at 10:00 am PST to have NetApp, VMware and Zimbra experts further explain the details and answer any of your questions. Click here to register.

You may also download the white paper now.



Join VMware Zimbra in Hannover, Germany at CeBIT

Posted in News, Partners by Greg Armanini on February 22nd, 2011

CeBIT 2011, the largest tech industry event in the world, is just around the corner (March 1st – 5th) in Hannover, Germany.  This year VMware and Zimbra are exhibiting together and you will be able to learn firsthand about Zimbra virtualization and the all-new Zimbra Collaboration Server 7.

Please stop by for a personal demo:

VMware Stand
Halle 2, Stand A 30

Visit our CeBIT web page to learn more about the speaking schedule and/or receive a free exhibition pass.



Share More, Send Less with Zimbra 7

Posted in Community, News, Virtualization by Zimbra Team on February 7th, 2011

At VMware we are singularly focused on helping our customers transform their IT environments into a cloud that can deliver IT as a Service.  A lot has changed in the IT market over the last few years with the proliferation of tablets, iOS devices, browser based applications and pay as you go services.  VMware is committed to providing IT organizations the tools needed to deliver IAAS, PAAS and SAAS services to their users.

As part of this commitment, VMware increased its investment in Zimbra during 2010 in order to accelerate the release of Zimbra 7 – the newest version of our collaboration platform.  Zimbra provides users with a collaboration cloud for accessing personal and shared information wherever you are while providing IT the controls to back up and secure the information.

The first thing you might notice about this announcement is that we are releasing all three of our core products – VMware Zimbra Collaboration Server (formally Zimbra Collaboration Suite), along with beta versions of VMware Zimbra Collaboration Appliance (ZCA) and VMware Zimbra Desktop (ZD).  Going forward, we are committed to releasing future offerings of VMware Zimbra concurrently as a single platform.

We believe that this commitment to a single platform provides huge benefits to both VMware Zimbra end-users and administrators.

  • For our users, this means that if you are online or offline, on a BlackBerry, iPhone or laptop, it won’t matter. You will always have a consistent experience with Zimbra.  Users will have access to their cloud of information wherever they go.
  • For IT Administrators, you get more deployment options and control. As always, you have the choice to deploy in a private cloud or in the public cloud. Zimbra 7 is controlled using a simple web based administrative console that can be installed in less than 10 minutes.

Zimbra 7 has 230 new enterprise-grade features, including data sharing, expanded calendaring and search functionality, and even better management tools. Our goal with Zimbra is to increase end user productivity, open the platform and improve manageability.

Some of the new capabilities the team developed for VMware Zimbra 7 include:


File Sharing and Versioning

Share more, send less:

  • File Sharing – VMware Zimbra 7 includes access to Zimbra’s Briefcase functionality, which allows users to easily share or store files in the cloud.  Zimbra 7 enables lightweight document management with added control directly from within Zimbra. You can upload and access multiple versions of a Briefcase file or document, and new “check-in” and “check-out” controls further simplify document management and collaboration.

Data Self-Recovery

Simplified management:

  • End-user Self Service – Zimbra has long been committed to easier system administration, and Zimbra 7 is no exception. In addition to features such as distribution list management controls and simpler functions for load balancing, system automatic recovery, and zero downtime hardware maintenance, Zimbra 7 also provides new options to allow users to serve themselves rather than calling IT. For instance, a user can restore his own deleted items even after he has emptied his trash. Zimbra 7 is also our most robust delivery ever, with over 2000 bugs fixed and performance and scalability improvements as well.

Suggested Meeting Times

Manage your inbox:

  • Increased productivity – Our team also spent a lot of time rethinking the mailbox and calendaring. Calendaring updates enable new workflows to coordinate appointments and schedule meetings among multiple people. The Scheduling Wizard helps users suggest times, rooms, and resources to all attendees simultaneously – taking location and time zone into account – making it easier to coordinate schedules with a large number of users.

For a full list of new features check out our announcement.

As always, you can download Zimbra Collaboration Server 7 (formerly Zimbra Collaboration Suite) along with beta versions of VMware Zimbra Desktop 7 and VMware Zimbra Appliance 7 at http://www.zimbra.com/downloads.