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

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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.

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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.

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.

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.

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.

Tomorrow the VMware and Zimbra team will be hosting a live webinar covering some key differences between Zimbra and Google Apps.   It will be quite informative and an opportunity to ask questions of the Zimbra team; here is the webinar information from the Zimbra Webinar Series:

If you cannot attend in person tomorrow, a recording will be available about a week after.   Please be sure to visit our webinar page where you can find it as well as other upcoming webinars; here is a tentative upcoming webinar list:

Jan 19th
Zimbra vs. Google Apps

Feb 9th
Zimbra 7.0 Launch – Live Demo

March 2nd
Zimbra vs. GroupWise

March 16th
Zimbra vs. MS Exchange

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:

http://www.vmware.com/products/zimbra/

http://www.vmware.com/products/springsource-hyperic/

How often do you spend extra time searching for the document that you want to attach to an email, or even worse you forget to attach the document before you hit send? The Drag and Drop Zimlet saves you time and makes it really easy. All you do is drag the files that you want to upload directly from the desktop to the Mail composer and drop them into your email. It’s that simple!

Back in 2007 Zimbra released the first version of a Firefox 2.0 extension and an accompanying Zimlet to make the mundane task of uploading effortless. We just couldn’t stop there, and contemplated multiple ways to bring this great feature to many clients. Browser Plus was considered, but deep down many of us were really more excited about HTML5’s upcoming possibilities – especially its advantage of not requiring the user to install more add-ons. Fast forward to 2010 and that specification is now a reality.

How to Enable the Drag and Drop Zimlet: Go to Preferences > Zimlets > check the box for “DnD” > save & reload your web-client.

How to Use Drag and Drop with your Documents: Select one or multiple files on your computer. Then simply bring them into the Mail compose window and release them onto the message below the subject line that reads: “Tip: Drag and drop files from your desktop to add attachments to this message”.

Your browser goes to work uploading:

Attachment is complete and a draft is auto-saved:

Download:
The Zimlet comes bundled in the latest server editions and desktop betas but you can also grab it here: http://gallery.zimbra.com/type/zimlet/drag-and-drop-attachments

Release Notes:

1. The previously XPI plugin is no longer needed with the use of HTML5 in modern browsers, just the Zimlet itself.
2. Compatible with ZCS/ZCA 6.0 (ZD 2.0) and newer.
3. Supported by the following browsers:

• Firefox 3.6+
• Chrome 4+
• Safari 4+ (Mac)

A quick video of the Zimlet in action:




Coming soon: The ability to insert dragged images directly into body, addition to the lite/standard client, and briefcase support for the new HTML5 compatible Zimlet.

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.

Stay tuned for the official ZCB 6.5 release date!

To learn more about ZCB, click on the links below:
http://www.zimbra.com/products/blackberry-enterprise-server.html

http://www.zimbra.com/downloads

2010 has been a busy year for the Zimbra team since we joined VMware in February.  And today, we are excited to announce the launch of the Zimbra Appliance.

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:

We have two exciting announcements about our Zimbra Connector for BlackBerry Enterprise Server (ZCB)!

First, we just released ZCB 6.0. This new release works with Zimbra Collaboration Suite 6.0 and includes some cool enhancements:

• Better calendar synchronization
• Removes runtime dependency on Microsoft Outlook processes
• Improved performance and stability

But we didn’t stop there: Today we are also announcing plans for ZCB 6.5 Beta and are looking for Beta testers. ZCB 6.5 will add support for BlackBerry Enterprise Server 5.0. This is a terrific step forward for the Zimbra products and supports our commitment to providing ubiquitous access to messaging and collaboration data regardless of channel or device.

To learn more about ZCB 6.0 and download, click on the link below:

http://www.zimbra.com/products/blackberry-enterprise-server.html

http://www.zimbra.com/downloads

To join the ZCB 6.5 Beta Program:

Please send an email to beta@zimbra.com if you are interested in gaining early access to ZCB 6.5 Beta and trying BES 5.0 integration.

Thank you for your continued support!