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:

Recently we updated our listing on VMware’s Virtual Appliance Marketplace with a trial version of ZCS Network Edition 6.0.6. We packaged it up in two formats – traditional VMX/VMDK and the Open Virtualization Format, OVF for short, using VMware Studio. The traditional VMX/VMDK package can be use with VMware’s desktop products like Workstation for Linux/Windows and Fusion for MAC. You can also go grab VMware Player for FREE and test drive the ZCS trial on either Linux or Windows. The OVF package can be used “out-of-the-box” with VMware vSphere or imported to other VMware desktop and server products using the standalone OVF Tool 1.0 or vCenter Converter.

The OVF 1.0 format is a platform independent, DMTF standard that streamlines the application setup process in a virtual environment.  This makes deploying the ZCS trial fast and simple to testdrive the latest features.

• You can deploy the ZCS trial OVF package right from a URL directly to VMware vSphere using the “Deploy OVF Template” wizard in the vSphere Client or the OVF Tool 1.0.
• The vSphere Client reads the OVF template and auto-configures certain virtual machine settings as well as guides you through mapping the network and storage configurations into your target runtime environment.
• You will also be prompted to answer runtime specific installation parameters like the ZCS server’s hostname and the admin username/password.

All of the captured input is used on “first boot” to automatically configure the ZCS trial as a unique running instance complete with an activated 15 day trial license! This is a good example of the collaboration that’s been happening between the Zimbra and vSphere teams and a sign of good things to come as we are busy building our Zimbra virtual appliance.

The Zimbra virtual appliance will be ready to ship later this year and will feature a

• Simplified Admin experience
• Expanded usage of OVF properties to further streamline the deployment process
• New capabilities to simplify patch management, mailbox creation, and migration

For more information, you can check out the appliance RFEs in bugzilla.

UPDATE: You can now find this at http://www.zimbra.com/products/zimbra-appliance.html