As you may have noticed, we have just posted the recording of the Zimbra Collaboration Suite 6-to-7 and VMware Overview webinar. This was hugely popular — hundreds of customers, partners and community members attended — because it covered three critical areas of Zimbra’s future:

• What’s in ZCS 6.0 (powerful new admin features, Enterprise support and usability improvements) as well as near-term additions (such as support for Android, BES 5.0, BES Express, and Outlook 2010).
• The roadmap of ZCS 7.0 and beyond: a fascinating discussion of calendar wizards, powerful distribution lists, workspaces, and IM changes.
• The future with VMware: how Zimbra fits within the VMware stack and the value it brings to the Zimbra environment (notably an appliance, vSphere integration for DR, HA and site recovery).

 
We also received many excellent questions – too many to answer during the live session, so we’ll cover the remaining here:

Q: Zimlets, IMHO, should allow push as well as pull; akin to what IM does at the moment.  Realtime phone apps require that capability to allow popups in a client session.
A: Real-time push and pull updates are fully supported in the ZWC, Zimlet should be able to do the same.

Q: Is the IM server connection change slated for the Network or Open Source Edition?
A: External XMPP proxy/interop it is scheduled for both.

Q: Do you have public calendars for appointments or a conference room? And only certain people can reserve timeframe and all others can view?
A: The use case here is akin to a “board room” where only certain people have rights to book the room, but everyone can view the availability of that room. The answer is yes: you can create a public calendar for the conference room as a resource, and then permit only specific users to reserve that resource.

Q: Better quarantining of emails, AS/AV stats. and per user prefs. akin to MailScanner and MailWatch
A: Zimbra team is expanding its anti-spamming and anti-virus functionality. Stay tuned for more information. In the meantime, you may want to consider using some postfix capable methods.

Q: Any word on per-user read state on messages?
A: The use case here is when multiple users have access to a single account, one user clicking on a message will mark it as read for all other future users. The feature enhancement (individual user state on shared messages) takes significant effort, has not been committed yet, but is discussed thoroughly in bugzilla. If this is a feature you feel is crucial, please vote for it or mention so in a support case.

Q: Would email tracking likely to be a feature that will be added back in; since zmmsgtrace was pulled?
A: There is a enhancement request for a tracing replacement, but have not yet released a schedule; stay tuned for more details. If you feel this is a key feature, please comment on its implementation in bugzilla.

Q: Which of the features are targeted @ the FOSS or the Network Edition?
A: We generally don’t make final decisions until we approach the release date. Check pm.zimbra.com for specific feature release information, and vote for the features you see as most valuable.

Q: Will Zimbra DR allow realtime replication and from a multi-tenant experience allow geo connection to the most appropriate server ?
A: We are going to leverag all of the High Availability and Data Recovery options that are provided by vSphere (and partners). We’re also looking at additional capabilities beyond that using direct server sync – stay tuned.

Q: VMware recommends single processor vms for best performance. Looking forward to easier multi-component zimbra installation or guide.
A: The VMware team suggests using the fewest number of virtual cpus required to satisfy the workload. If you need four, you should use four. See the new Zimbra on vSphere Recommendations wiki article for more information.

Q: Will VMware Update Manager take care of the updates?
A: Look for future announcements – perhaps for a release sometime in 2011.

Q: With respect to the appliance, would one be allowed to tune SA and CLAMAV?
A: By design, there is no CLI or shell in the Zimbra Appliance. It’s built for simplicity of management, so all configuration and administration will be done through a new web-based streamlined UI; likewise if something is not in our current admin console it’s probably not built into the appliance yet either.

Q: Could you expand on the AD / External Auth changes that you will be making? In connection with that, will you be able to deploy Zimbra and have it automatically keep in sync with users in Active Directory?
A: For the appliance, there will be a one time bulk import.
Here are the RFE’s: 44835 | 45223 | 45174 Please vote for the features that are important to you.
For ZCS, we are not making any AD/ External Auth changes. Zmexternaldirsync does this today.

Q: Any plans to improve the management console for zimbra network edition, i.e. Monitoring and Status tools? I would like to see the kind of admin tools you’d find with mdaemon or other similar apps. Right now it’s slow and doesn’t provide much visual feedback.
A: We’re working with Hyperic for additional monitoring and reporting capabilities. We have not released a schedule yet, more details soon.

Q: Are there firm time lines on 32 bit phaseout?
A: The end of 7.0 will be the last time 32-bit is supported, and the dates are not yet finalized. Therefore, it will be quite some time before 32-bit is depreciated. We recommend that you move to 64-bit if you are new to Zimbra or planning an upgrade. See the phase out FAQ for more details.

Q: Will migration from physical 32 bit system to Appliance be built in to appliance? or have migration tool to perform this?
A: The zimbra-to-zimbra migration tool is completely independent of the hardware. You should be able to migrate from a 32-bit machine to the appliance without a problem.

Q: There has been a lot of contention on the forums about the priority of particular rfe’s/bugs; now with greater resources would Zimbra look at a different type of voting mechanism?
A: If you are having trouble with the current methods or a hitting ’show-stopper’ issue please contact the community mangers to help you. (As always, customers also have the option of directing inquires through support to raise their urgency.) Having said this, we’re always open to new ideas for the community process. If you prefer a specific voting mechanism, we’d like to hear about it – and the 7.0 detailed roadmap will be open soon.

Q: Scaling on VMWare… it’s going to be 2011 before we’ll be able to run mailbox servers on VM with thousands of accounts per mailbox?
A: Zimbra already supports thousands of mailboxes in a virtualized environment. The Zimbra Appliance, which will require little-to-no configuration or administration — a “cloud in a box” — is slated for small- to medium-sized businesses.

Q: What about official CentOS support?
A: Since one cannot get support at the operating system provider level, our technical staff can’t 100% support it. Having said that, it should perform similarly to RHEL.

Q: Is HSM going to change?
A: The Hierarchical Storage Management in the Network Edition doesn’t have any major changes targeted till 8.0 server. (We did add the ability to offload other items besides messages in 6.0 with a search type query.) There are no plans on adding HSM to the Open Source Edition.

Q: Are there plans to allow installation on big iron like HP IA64 ? (RX range)
A: Not yet, as there does not appear to be a business case to build and test on big iron. You can file this as a feature enhancement and ask others to vote for it.

Q: How do I find new zimlets?
A: We have a renewed Zimlet plugins site with more than 80 contributions. Look for future additions such as a revamp social & IM zimlets, additional salesforce integration, webex changes, smart scheduler and many others: gallery.zimbra.com

Q: ZCS web question: Being able to separate windows from Zimbra is nice for emails. How about having that for all of the other apps (contacts, calendar etc)?
A: Yes, this is something we are working on. An example is tabbed calendaring, which is slated for version 7.

Q: Will there be tool to bulk loading documents into Briefcase, especially if supporting collaborating workgroups?
A: Yes, there will be a migration tool. And at some point in the future, we’ll have multi-file import in the web-client. If you are looking for convenient file sync today, so far we’ve built-in webDAV support.

Q: Looking forward to whitepapers and wiki for vmware/zimbra. Encourage?. mailto is also a problem for us.
A: Whitepapers and wikis are soon to come. Were looking into EWS for Entourage. The Zimbra Desktop does work with mailto links. It is defaulted off (to change it, go to the preferences and select zimbra desktop as the default mailto handler).

Q: Can you mention the URL for the new dev Wiki?
A: A good place to start wiki.zimbra.com/wiki/ZCS_6.0:Zimlet_Developers_Guide:Introduction

With over 55 million commercial Zimbra mailboxes deployed worldwide, and millions more on open source, there are many users reaping the benefits of our next-generation collaboration experience. Many factors contributed to our rapid adoption — such as integrated conversation views, tagging, sharing, powerful search, and mobility — but one of the most important is the ability to customize and extend Zimbra.

To promote extensibility, the Zimbra platform exposes powerful Theme, Data and Zimlet APIs. With these APIs, you can customize everything from branding and interface styles…to integrating external applications & services…to implementing new features. And with a vibrant Community continually using these technologies to enhance Zimbra, the customization you are looking for might already be available.

To that end, we have been busy at work leveraging new resources from our friends at VMware and are pleased to announce the new Zimbra Gallery as the destination for sharing Zimbra product extensions.

The new Gallery includes improved navigation and search capabilities so it is easier than ever to find extensions for Zimbra. The Gallery supports ratings and reviews so Community members can share their feedback and experiences. It is also much easier to share extensions, update status and highlight your work with improved extension “landing pages.”

Checkout the new Gallery at http://gallery.zimbra.com

The Gallery includes new Zimlets & Themes as well as some updated favorites such as Appointment Summary, Birthday Reminder, Email Attachment Alert, Email Downloader and Email Quotes.

Please visit the Gallery, download extensions, provide feedback and contribute. We look forward to seeing the library of available extensions in the Zimbra Gallery expand in the weeks and months to come. Enjoy!

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

In today’s climate IT departments are under a lot of pressure to cut costs yet maintain services that don’t compromise on features.  So it’s no surprise we hear more and more the questions, “How does Zimbra total cost-of-ownership (TCO) compare with Microsoft Exchange?”   In fact, it recently hit #3 on our popularity chart as organizations contemplate Exchange upgrades again (we’ll save the top two questions for another day).

Public field data typically shows Zimbra Collaboration Suite ahead of MS Exchange Server when licensing and hardware costs are compared for various on-premises deployments.   However, while licensing and hardware cost data is readily available, perhaps the most significant recurring cost components in the equation are less well documented — additional time spent administering servers and software and the high cost of support contracts.

This cost differential often gets hazy because most organizations do not closely log time spent on specific tasks, including software administration or escalated user support issues.  Instead, in most circles you simply hear something analogous to “my Exchange servers are really cranky.”   But how much valuable productivity are you actually losing?

It turns out at EDUCAUSE when we caught up with the University of Pennsylvania (Penn) they shared some great field data with us on this very topic from their own TCO case study.

According to Adam Preset,  an IT Technical Director in Information Systems & Computing (Penn’s central IT organization), Penn’s IT Services added Zimbra 18 months ago to provide departments across the campus a Web 2.0 option in addition to Microsoft Outlook and Exchange 2007 (Zimbra can share Active Directory, resources and free-busy times with Exchange).  Today their split-mode deployment consists of 3,100 Exchange users and 13,700 Zimbra users (each with grad students, faculty and employees) running equivalent feature sets (email, calendaring, sharing, mobile, etc).

Split-mode deployments are not uncommon (see Argonne National Labs), but in the case of Penn, the central IT staff’s administration time is closely logged on each system because they charge back time for service rendered to the other departments.   Combined with a single team managing both systems simultaneously in split-mode and you have a natural control for cost data.

Adam says they have found Zimbra takes significantly fewer man-hours to administer.  In absolute terms Exchange servers take 33% more effort and require one extra full-time headcount per year — even with 4.4 times more users on the Zimbra servers.

Here is a video where Adam discusses their deployment, cost methodology and why more users chose Zimbra over Exchange on campus:

Adam later noted, “to bring the Exchange user base up to Zimbra’s scale and provide the expected level of support we’d need to hire new administrators – probably two or more FTEs, which isn’t practical.”

He also added that common culprits impacting costs in the Microsoft deployment are Outlook client and PST data issues, more support needs on the desktop due to lack of adoption of Outlook Web Access (OWA), Exchange data restores and more frequent server downtime. Whereas advantages for Zimbra are easier overall server administration and fewer help desk incidents because so many users say they prefer the Zimbra AJAX Web Client over traditional desktop clients.

So what’s the key take-away?  Though every organization has different cost sensitivity; data points like this serve as gentle reminders not to forget the whole picture. While a license discount or storage price drop can be helpful for initial TCO calculation, the human capital component is key to understanding real long-term value!

Adam Preset spoke at EDUCAUSE Annual with Pam Buffington of Georgia Tech on “Implementing a Cost-Effective and User-Friendly E-Mail, Calendaring, and Collaboration System.”

Zimlets and the ability to extend the Zimbra Web Client is a pretty widely known capability. But did you know that Zimbra also has a framework that allows developers to extend Zimbra server-side functionality?

Zimbra Server Extensions provide a mechanism to add functionality to the server in lieu of modifying web.xml and other web server configuration files. By implementing a Server Extension, you can inject or in some cases, intercept, server-side functionality. Some examples include:

• Handling authentication requests against a user store different than the built-in Zimbra LDAP user store. Server Extensions provide a way to “plug-in” your custom authentication mechanism.
• Creating custom SOAP requests to augment the current Zimbra SOAP API.
• Registering custom mime handlers for the processing of message mime components (i.e. body, message and multipart nodes).
• Performing registration or “bootstrapping” of server-side components, such as the Microsoft Exchange Free/Busy resolver.

Getting Started

Writing an extension starts by implementing the com.zimbra.cs.extension.ZimbraExtension interface:

public interface ZimbraExtension {

    /**
     * Defines a name for the extension. It must be an identifier.
     * @return the extension name
     */
    public String getName();

    /**
     * Initializes the extension. Called when the extension is loaded.
     *
     * @throws ServiceException
     */
    public void init() throws ServiceException;

    /**
     * Terminates the extension. Called when the server is shut down.
     *
     */
    public void destroy();
}

To create your Extension:

1. Write a MyZimbraExtension class that implements the ZimbraExtension interface.
2. Create a JAR file (for example: myext.jar) and include the following attribute in the JAR manifest file:
   • Zimbra-Extension-Class: com.example.MyZimbraExtension
3. Place the myext.jar into the {zimbra_install-dir}/lib/ext/{my-ext-dir} directory.

Below are a few examples, though not an exhaustive list, of how the Server Extension framework can be used:

Custom HTTP Handlers

A Server Extension can process HTTP GET/POST/OPTIONS requests by extending the com.zimbra.cs.extension.ExtensionHttpHandler abstract class and registering the subclass in the Extension init() method.

public class MyHttpHandler implements ExtensionHttpHandler {

    // the path under which MyHandler is registered
    public String getPath() {
        return "/myext/myhandler";
    }

    // override doGet/doPost/ doOptions as needed
    ...
}

and in MyZimbraExtension.init(), do the following:

com.zimbra.cs.extension.ExtensionDispatcherServlet.register(this, new MyHttpHandler());

This would result in processing of requests at http://{my-zimbra-server-url}/service/extension/myext/myhandler being delegated to the MyHttpHandler class.

Custom SOAP Requests

If an Extension needs to support extra SOAP requests, it can do so by implementing the com.zimbra.soap.DocumentService interface and registering custom SOAP requests & operations handlers from it.

public class MyDocumentService implements DocumentService {

    /**
     * Registers <code>DocumentHandler<code> instance with document dispatcher.
     */
    public void registerHandlers(DocumentDispatcher dispatcher) {
        dispatcher.registerHandler(HelloWorldOp.REQUEST_QNAME, new HelloWorldOp());
    }
}

and in MyZimbraExtension.init(), do the following:

com.zimbra.soap.SoapServlet.addService("SoapServlet", new MyDocumentService());

Custom Authentication

If your Zimbra deployment needs to authenticate user passwords from, for example, a “home grown” authentication system and not from LDAP (which is the out-of-the-box Zimbra solution), the Extension can do so by extending the com.zimbra.cs.account.auth.ZimbraCustomAuth abstract class.  The subclass would have to implement an authenticate() method to which the plain-text password is passed as one of the arguments.

Learn More

A detailed implementation document is available at ZimbraServer/docs/extensions.txt. Now that we’ve introduced the topic, stay tuned for more information on specific Server Extension implementation examples. 

By last count, there are roughly 25 current openings in team Zimbra.  Better yet we’re looking to add talent across the board: developers (UI, client, server), QA, support, sales, marketing, biz dev, channel, professional services, you name it.  So many in fact, it quickly starts to sound like a droning list of names in an Oscars acceptance speech (and rest assured we probably forgot to mention at least one functional role too).

Please spread the word!

http://www.zimbra.com/about/careers.html

Zimbra partner Nordicmind, recently published a case study on service provider TDC and their hosted business email deployment powered by Zimbra.  TDC is a leading telephony, internet, communications, and hosting solutions provider operating in Finland, Norway, and Denmark and specializes in services for businesses; in 2009 it generated $6.6 billion US in revenue with 11.7 million total customers.

It’s great seeing partners like Nordicmind take on these larger, and often more intricate, deployments and yet another indicator of how strong the Zimbra partner ecosystem has become.  There are now over 1000 VAR, HSP and distribution partners and many more on the way as our relationship with VMware flourishes.

It’s also worth noting this deployment not only entailed an upgrade to a modern collaboration platform but also a move to VMware ESX at the same time.  Zimbra and VMware together offer service providers the optimal blend of advanced features, rapid scalability and redundancy they require to operate mission critical cloud services.    More and more we are seeing hosting and service providers leading the charge into virtualization as the benefits become clear.

In fact, in a recent Zimbra Forum poll 38.6% of respondents claimed they are already running Zimbra on VMware which means a lot of organizations are seeing the light!

Read more in the TDC and Nordicmind case study (pdf).

If you have ever written a Zimlet that includes HTML markup directly in JavaScript, you know that escaping and formatting the HTML can be a cumbersome and error prone process.

There is an easier way: Templates. Templates allow you to separate HTML markup from JavaScript code. This enables you to leverage HTML in your Zimlets without the formatting hassles.

The Problem

A common technique for using HTML markup within JavaScript is to use an Array() and append HTML markup data as array entries. Once you have all of the HTML markup in the Array(), you perform an Array.join() to create a single String that represents the HTML markup.

For example, say you wanted you to use the following HTML in your Zimlet:

<table border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2" width="100%">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td colspan="2">This is a sample table HTML code...</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>


Using the Array() technique, your JavaScript would look like:

var htmlArray = new Array(); var i = 0;
htmlArray[i++] = "<table border=\"0\" cellspacing=\"0\" cellpadding=\"2\" width=\"100%\"><tbody><tr><td colspan=\"2\">";
htmlArray[i++] = "This is a sample table HTML code...";
htmlArray[i++] = "</td></tr></tbody></table>";
htmlMarkup = html.join("");


Even with this simple HTML <table> example, you can see formatting the HTML into an Array() can be tedious. Plus, the extensive use of escaped characters makes it harder to debug the HTML markup. And if you include CSS and style elements with your HTML, the challenge only increases. It’s easy to see that using the JavaScript Array() technique can quickly become out-of-control.

The Solution

With Templates, you separate the HTML markup from your JavaScript code. You create a Template file that contains the HTML markup. That Template file gets compiled into JavaScript and that compiled Template can be referenced from your Zimlet JavaScript.

So instead of the JavaScript Array() technique described above, you can put the HTML markup directly in a Template file (just wrap the HTML in a <template> identification element) and compile.

Here is the same simple HTML <table> example from before in a Template file:

<template id="Simple">
<table border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2" width="100%">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td colspan="2">This is a sample table HTML code...</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
</template>


Compiling the Template file converts the HTML markup into JavaScript that can be referenced and used from your Zimlet. No longer do you have to format and escape the HTML markup by hand.

To reference the compiled Template from your Zimlet, first, in your Zimlet Definition File XML, <include> the compiled Template as a resource. Then, in your Zimlet JavaScript, use AjxTemplate.expand() to retrieve the HTML markup from the Template.

var html = AjxTemplate.expand("com_zimbra_template.templates.Simple#Simple");


Now the HTML markup is available for use in your Zimlet as you see fit.

A Word about Compiling Templates

Prior to Zimbra Collaboration Suite 6.0.5, you had to compile your Templates manually and include the compiled Templates with your Zimlet ZIP package. We have tried to make that manual compilation process a little easier by providing a simple Template Compiler utility found here.

But new with is ZCS 6.0.5 is automatic template compilation. Template files included with your Zimlet are compiled at Zimlet deploy time, eliminating the need for manual compilation. This automatic compilation is also supported when using the Development Directory, which makes iterative development even easier.

One More Thing

Your Template can be more than just static HTML markup. You can pass data to the compiled Template when you call AjxTemplate.expand() and reference dynamic data within your Template.

var dataArray = {phone: "123-456-7890"}; canvas.innerHTML = AjxTemplate.expand("com_zimbra_template.templates.Simple#Simple", dataArray);


Useful Links

More information on creating, compiling and using dynamic data with Templates can be found here:

http://wiki.zimbra.com/index.php?title=ZCS_6.0:Zimlet_Developers_Guide:Templates

There are also examples available in the Zimlet Developer’s Guide:

• This example shows using a simple Template to display HTML in a tab.

  http://wiki.zimbra.com/index.php?title=ZCS_6.0:Zimlet_Developers_Guide:Examples:Tab_Template

• This example shows using a Template to display HTML in a dialog.

  http://wiki.zimbra.com/index.php?title=ZCS_6.0:Zimlet_Developers_Guide:Examples:Simple_Dialog_with_Template

Happy coding!

It’s official–  Zimbra is now a part of VMware.

As we settle into our new digs in Palo Alto, you can bet we remain as focused as ever on building and supporting the best open source email and collaboration software for our community, customers and partners. We’re committed to our mission to set the standard for Web-based collaboration and to VMware’s overall mission to simplify IT.

We’re excited to join VMware’s Cloud Services organization, helping to meet increasing customer demand for more public and private on-premises cloud computing services delivered through VMware’s innovative virtualization platform. Zimbra’s modular architecture and APIs make it ideal for virtualization, and for offering cloud-based email and collaboration services.

With VMware’s support, we’re looking forward to accelerating our product roadmap, optimizing Zimbra products for VMware’s vSphere cloud infrastructure, and continuing to build on the record growth that has allowed us to reach more than 55 million paid mailboxes in just five years.

Here’s to Zimbra and VMware!