As part of our continuing effort to simplify IT for administrators and end users, we have integrated VMware’s vFabric Hyperic application performance monitoring technology with Zimbra Appliance.
Now offered as part of Zimbra Appliance and requiring no additional set up, Hyperic gives Zimbra administrators the ability to more rapidly pinpoint, correct, and prevent application performance problems wherever they occur in the application infrastructure. As a result, administrators have up-to-the-minute insight into a comprehensive set of performance metrics related to availability, throughput and utilization that enables them to alert team members on a wide range of issues and to rapidly determine root cause.
Additional benefits for VMware vSphere customers who are running Zimbra Appliance include:
Rapid diagnosis of performance problems
Advanced alerting
Automated problem resolution
We will keep you posted as we continue in our mission to provide out-of-the box next generation collaboration solutions that simplify IT.
For more information on Zimbra Appliance and vFabric Hyperic, follow these links:
We are pleased to announce the general availability of Zimbra Desktop 2.0! This is a major milestone for the Zimbra team and includes significant feature and performance upgrades. The difference between Desktop 1.0 and 2.0 is enormous thanks to the millions of downloads, thousands of forum posts, and hundreds of bugs posted by Zimbra customers and community members.
As most readers of this blog know, Zimbra Desktop is a completely unique client. It’s the only free, cross-platform tool allowing you to meld your worlds on or offline – storing and syncing your email, calendar, contacts, files and documents in the cloud, yet having them locally accessible when on the road. And now, in Zimbra Desktop 2.0 we have also added management of your Facebook and Twitter accounts.
Of course, Zimbra Desktop is also a valuable complement to the Zimbra Web Client and Zimbra Mobile because it provides organizations the exact same user experience on or offline, thus resulting in no productivity loss as users switch between applications.
Zimbra Desktop 2.0 builds on that success with significant advancements for End Users…
In addition to the robust list of features already supported, we’ve added read-receipts, email filtering, tabbed compose, mandatory spell check, three-pane reading view, calendar fish-eye view, and shared access to email folders, calendars, address book and briefcase.
Desktop already simplifies our lives by aggregating multiple email accounts (Zimbra, Yahoo! Mail, Gmail, AOL, Hotmail, etc.). Now it adds the ability to aggregate Social accounts (Facebook, Twitter, Digg, etc.) into the same single user interface. This is the first and only online/offline Enterprise-grade client that offers aggregation of multiple accounts for email, calendar, contacts and social. It is the true inbox for the way we work today.
Desktop’s integrated support for the Zimlet Gallery means users have one-click access to 100+ productivity tools: Meebo, Google Translator, sticky notes, email reminders, email templates and many more.
… and for Administrators:
Desktop 2.0 lowers help desk and IT costs by deploying the same application on Linux, Mac and Windows and by having a consistent user experience across web client, mobile client, and desktop client.
Desktop 2.0 promotes easier back-up and restore, given all of the data and settings are backed-up in the cloud.
Nearly limitless extensions and personalization without IT headaches through the one-click Zimlet Gallery integration.
Given the high download rates of Zimbra Desktop 2.0 beta and release candidates, we assume many Zimbra Desktop 1.0 users have already upgraded. However, if you haven’t already installed Zimbra Desktop 2.0, existing 1.0 users should note that these significant changes have resulted in changes to the underlying database schema and installation procedures. Translation: Zimbra Desktop 2.0 will be a fresh install on your computer and trigger a re-sync – be sure to read the upgrade notes.
Again, many thanks to the community for its continued support of Desktop. See Zimbra Desktop for more details or to download Zimbra Desktop today!
We are headed to Anaheim for this year’s EDUCAUSE Conference next week and we are really looking forward to seeing everyone! Since last year, we have started a new chapter as part of VMware and we have been working to integrate our products and channels to continue to bring you innovative, open source email and collaboration services that set the standards for web-based collaboration in the cloud. We have a lot of events planned for this year’s conference, and we’d like to invite you to join us to hear more about our product roadmap, share you feedback, get a sneak peek at some upcoming new features, and enjoy an evening of great food and jazz music, New Orleans style!
Visit the VMware/Zimbra Booth (#941)
We’ll be showcasing the new features that will launch in the upcoming ZCS 7.0, Desktop 2.0 and Zimbra Connector for BES 5.0 releases later this year. You’ll see these new features along with demos of some of the other VMware products so stop by and see us in Booth #941.
Join the Zimbra Advisory Meeting on Tuesday, 10/12
Please help us shape the future of Zimbra. You are invited to our Zimbra Advisory Meeting to discuss and share your feedback on our product roadmap and future releases. If you have not already replied, please RSVP by Thursday, 10/7 to reserve your seat.
Date: Tuesday, October 12th
Time: 1-3 pm
Location:Sheraton Anaheim Hotel (900 South Disneyland Drive, 1.5 miles from the Anaheim Convention Center)
Transportation: A shuttle will be provided. Please meet at 12:30 PM at the Shuttle Stop in front of the Hilton Anaheim. The shuttle bus will be clearly marked indicating the destination as the Sheraton Anaheim Hotel. At the conclusion of the event, the shuttle will take you back to the Convention Center for the opening reception of EDUCAUSE 2010.
We cordially invite you to spend an evening with great friends, jazz music and food at Ralph Brennan’s Jazz Kitchen. If you have not already replied, RSVP by Thursday, October 7 to reserve your seat.
Date: Wednesday, October 13th
Cocktails: 6:30pm – 7:30 pm (in the Courtyard)
Dinner: 7:30pm – 10:30 pm (in the Parlor Room)
Location: Ralph Brennan’s Jazz Kitchen (Downtown Disney District)
Please join us for our discussion on “Next Generation Collaboration, the Cloud and Virtualization: How to Transform and Simplify IT”, moderated by our very own Greg Armanini on Thursday, October 14th at 1pm in Room#210A.
We thank you for your continued support and feedback and we look forward to seeing you in Anaheim!
We’re excited to be part of our first Open World Forum (September 30th and October 1st, Eurosites Georges V, Paris), where we’ll take center stage to showcase Zimbra products.
The Open World Forum is the world’s leading summit meeting bringing together decision-makers and communities to cross-fertilize open technological, economic and social initiatives to build the digital future. Beyond the forum itself, it hosts several ambitious initiatives. It also delivers and debates each year the 2020 Free Libre and Open Source Software Roadmap.
Below is a list of the Zimbra activities that we have planned. If you have not already signed-up and you would like to attend this year’s event, click on any of the links below to get to the registration pages. We hope that you can join us at the Open World Forum in Paris!
Seminar slot in Open IT Showroom:
“Lessons from the Cloud: How Application clouds are evolving to meet New End User, Administrator and Datacenter trends” presented by Lars Ronning on September 30th from 11:30am to 12:00pm. openworldforum.org/attend/agenda
Our friends at Smartsheet have just posted a new Zimlet application tab in the Gallery that looks very promising; we have a few uses in mind already for our team and internal Zimbra deployment. Here is a summary they kindly provided:
Manage Any Kind of Work with the Smartsheet Zimlet
Add the Smartsheet tab to your Zimbra solution and manage your projects, sales pipelines and crowdsourcing solutions as easily as you manage your Calendar. Smartsheet puts a familiar spreadsheet-like face on a flexible work automation engine. Integration Overview
Smartsheet is integrated with the following Zimbra features:
Calendar - view key project dates in your Zimbra calendar or key Zimbra calendar dates in your Smartsheet project calendar
Contacts - import Zimbra contacts into Smartsheet for streamlined sharing with colleagues and other collaborators
Briefcase - attach files from your Zimbra Briefcase to any row in Smartsheet
Email - receive Smartsheet notifications and reminders via email
The Smartsheet Zimlet is now available in the Zimbra Gallery. Or watch the brief demo video below for more information.
More About Spreadsheet
Work projects often begin their life as a spreadsheet (e.g. sales pipelines, marketing events, research projects, product plans, candidate tracking,…) that gets emailed around to be updated.
Often, this approach falls short, and companies then invest money and training in converting to a software specific to Project Management, CRM, Marketing Automation, HR, etc. To the millions of Zimbra users – keep the spreadsheet layout you like and gain the additional automation you need. Smartsheet gives you a familiar, flexible spreadsheet interface and enables you to:
Attach any file or Zimbra Briefcase item to any row
Create multiple levels of sub-tasks
Track threaded discussion on any row
See your sheet in Calendar and Gantt views
Set Alerts and Notification on any row that keep you abreast of changes happening
Get discrete updates on pieces of your sheet via email
Get a consolidated report across many sheets
It’s the perfect union between spreadsheets, project tools and file sharing sites.
We’re excited to announce that Zimbra support for BlackBerry Enterprise Server 5.0 (BES 5.0) will be generally available with the release of Zimbra Connector for BlackBerry Enterprise Server 6.5 (ZCB 6.5) in the first half of Q4. For companies that want a better alternative to frustrating traditional email platforms, Zimbra is the first alternative to offer full support for the latest BlackBerry Enterprise Server.
ZCB 6.5 will add platform support for BlackBerry Enterprise Server 5.0 and BlackBerry Enterprise Server Express 5.0, providing native synchronization of mail, address book, calendar and tasks in BlackBerry devices. ZCB 6.5 will also provide support for Windows Server 2008 (32- and 64-bit).
Last month, we opened up the ZCB 6.5 Beta Program and received tremendous interest from customers of all shapes and sizes — from SMBs with 25 mailbox deployments to enterprise customers and hosting partners with 50,000+ mailbox deployments. The feedback we are receiving from customers participating in the ZCB 6.5 Beta Program is extremely positive and really shows us how great the demand is for BES 5.0 support.
Here’s what our customer Thomas Klaube, CTO of Ertel & Friends Multimedia GmbH had to say: “Our employees are often on-the-go and need full-featured mobile access to collaboration tools, so we are really excited that Zimbra is leading the way in support for the latest BlackBerry platform. We joined the ZCB 6.5 Beta Program and were up and running in no time.”
Zimbra is committed to continued support of the latest and greatest BlackBerry platforms and we’re really thrilled to be the first alternative email and collaboration platform to offer customers native integration with BES 5.0 and BES Express 5.0.
VMworld is just around the corner, and not only is it VMware’s most important event of the year, it’s also shaping up to be big for Zimbra too. We will be exhibiting with our new organization for the first time, showing off the new Zimbra Appliance and talking a lot more about the future of Zimbra and VMware together.
On the later point, we also want to provide an opportunity for attendees and customers in the general vicinity to hear about the Zimbra roadmap and provide us directional feedback away from the bustle of the show floor. As such we are having an Advisory Meeting and breakfast on Wednesday September 1st. The meeting is offsite at the W Hotel, so both show attendees and non-attendees are welcome.
Topics will include ZCS 7.0 features, Zimbra Appliance and Zimbra Desktop plus a round table discussion with the Zimbra product leadership team.
Date: Wednesday September 1, 2010
Time: 8am – 10am
Location: W Hotel, San Francisco
Space is limited and breakfast will be served, please RSVP to confirm your space and room location to: events@zimbra.com.
Also – for those planning on attending VMworld please remember the Tech Exchange where you can learn about Zimbra APIs, building Zimlets and more from the Zimbra product and development teams.
Please note if you cannot make the Advisory this time we will continue to host more in the future at major events!
The Zimbra Appliance is our first major step post acquisition to integrate Zimbra and VMware products and provide a simplified IT experience for administrators and their users. We have spent the last 5 months speaking with VMware and Zimbra customers and re-affirming their need for a simplified collaboration software stack that embraces the IT Platform of the future.
The call for simplicity reflects changes in the overall IT landscape driven by the evolution of user, administrator and datacenter requirements – many of these inspired by events in the consumer market. Whether it is the simplicity of the Amazon Kindle, the open platform of Facebook or the cross platform support of Twitter, users and administrators expect applications to be easier to use and deliver than ever before.
Here is a summary of market drivers influencing the launch of Zimbra Appliance:
User:
Users want applications to be available on any device, anywhere and anytime. These applications need to be available using traditional desktop clients and via the browser. The collaboration cloud is a hub for communications: regardless of device, the user has the context he needs to make decisions — like what flights to take, which purchase orders to accept/reject, or what information should be synced with the CRM system. Additionally, users want to be able to share information with co-workers, partners and other external users. Ted Schadler at Forrester recently wrote about this need to empower users.
Based on these needs and core to the Zimbra Appliance is our support for Zimbra Desktop, an offline cache of the user’s collaboration cloud, and our browser-based support for desktop, touchpad and mobile browsers. Additionally, we continue our support for legacy email clients (Microsoft Outlook) and a wide range of mobile devices (iPhone, Android and BlackBerry).
Administrator:
Administrators’ requirements have also changed and now require a simpler application stack that is easier to deploy, manage and update. Administrative innovations from companies like Saleforce.com and Successfactors have made it easier to deploy, manage and update applications that provide web-based administration tools and a complete software stack (application, operating system and update tools).
As part of offering a collaboration cloud as a complete software bundle, administrators are able to deploy the Zimbra Appliance in under 10 minutes. Beyond a quick set up, the Zimbra Appliance provides administrative tools for self-service, auto update, security policy control and the ability to remotely wipe a mobile device wipe.
Datacenter:
The last key change in the IT market that is driving simplification is that organizations want to deploy applications in a private or public cloud. In order to maximize flexibility and drive down the total cost of ownership, applications need to be portable and provide support for standards-based virtualization (OVF) and cross platform back up tools.
The Zimbra team has worked closely with hosting providers like Hosting.com and Contegix as well as many small businesses to make sure that the Appliance can be easily moved from private to personal clouds. Additionally, the Zimbra Appliance supports VMware’s Data Recovery so that administrators can manage multiple applications with a common back up and recovery tool.
This is just the first step on our efforts to integrate with other VMware products and continue our mission is to simplify IT and to provide a collaboration cloud that can run anywhere. Stay tuned for more updates in the coming months.
Check out a video of the Zimbra Appliance for more information:
Posted in Community, News by Zimbra Team on August 3rd, 2010
We’re excited to be part of our first VMworld, where we’ll take center stage to showcase Zimbra products.
August 30-September 2 at Moscone Center, San Francisco
October 12-14, Bella Center, Copenhagen
VMworld is a great chance to keep up on the latest technology trends, with over 300 different breakout sessions and labs on topics like leveraging the cloud, virtualizing enterprise applications and managing the desktop as a service. It is also a great opportunity to meet with knowledge experts or join group discussions with peers and industry experts. And, you’ll hear presentations from VMware leaders along with outside guest speakers. Plus you won’t want to miss the band. Last year was Foreigner, can you guess who it is this time? (Hints: + 30 million records; 7 top Billboard hits).
Below is a list of the Zimbra activities that we have planned. If you have not already signed-up and you would like to attend this year’s event, click on any of the links below to get to the registration pages. We hope that you can join us at VMworld 2010! Sessions
Breakout Speakers:
“Lessons from the Cloud: How Application Clouds Are Evolving to Meet New End User, Administrator and Datacenter Trends” – John Robb PC8326
“Zimbra and The Future for Mission Critical Apps in the Virtualized Enterprise” – Jon Dybik EA8210
Now offered as part of Zimbra Appliance and requiring no additional set up, Hyperic gives Zimbra administrators the ability to more rapidly pinpoint, correct, and prevent application performance problems wherever they occur in the application infrastructure. As a result, administrators have up-to-the-minute insight into a comprehensive set of performance metrics related to availability, throughput and utilization that enables them to alert team members on a wide range of issues and to rapidly determine root cause.
We are headed to Anaheim for this year’s 
We’re excited to be part of our first 
