VMwareZimbra 7 vs Google Apps

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VMware’s one year old, Zimbra saw its latest version, Zimbra.7 being unveiled on Monday last. VMware had acquired Zimbra from Yahoo January last year as it did not quite get the leverage the software required with Yahoo’s non-PR attitude.

Zimbra collaboration Server as it is called now, can run on Canonical’s Ubuntu, Novell’s SUSE Linux Enterprise Server distros’ on Linux on the RPM pack. The Red Hat’s Enterprise Linux too is compatible for Zimbra Collaboration Server.

Zimbra 7 Server products

The Zimbra Collaboration Server 7 offers Zimbra Collaboration Appliance and the Zimbra Desktop for offline work running on beta. The Zimbra 7is to be released for Windows, Mac, Linux and several other browsers as well.  It has 230 features from simple reviving deleted emails to auto scheduling you for your third party web conferencing applications.

Zimbra 7 to challenge present cloud service providers

What begun as an also-competing kind of venture against Microsoft’s Outlook and Exchange, IBM’s Notes/Domino as well as Novell’s GroupWise, Zimbra today is chasing the market leaders Google Apps, Lotus Live with its Zimbra 7 release.  Zimbra 7 is today dreaming the final frontiers –cloud applications, tools for enterprise collaborations.

As VMware puts its all behind Zimbra and pumps in more moolah for improving and introducing latest technology including the SaaS for it, market watchers will keep their fingers crossed so that the 2% and 66 million hosted emails to achieve 10 percent in the next couple of years.

According to John Robb, the senior director, products (Zimbra) and marketing (VMware), the near future of enterprise solutions is through cloud computing. Hence, ,VMware twin capabilities of market reach with the powerful open source Zimbra positions the brand at the right place at the right time.  As a matter of fact, they are offering multi-vendor subscription to expand the reach and flexibility of Zimbra for the end user.

Comparison between Google Apps and Zimbra 7

Google Apps fall shot on several features such as uploading, editing and sharing of other types of file formats such as .mp3. .tiff, and html due to its hosting capabilities. While the Zimbra briefcase offers creative storage solutions. In the realm of hosting services, Zimbra offers 48 days of restoring for each mailbox not matched by Google Apps.

However, where the Google Apps (at $50 per user every year for the Google Premier Edition) truly fails is its offline capabilities. Since Google Docs work on Google’s serves Saas and SOX compliance is an issue for public companies claims Zimbra. Further, Zimbra’s collaboration platform allows hosted service as well as deployment on-site. Enterprises can now use it for online or offline plus ensure AJAX functions. Therefore, Zimbra 7 will allow employees to access their mobile client, the net or their desktop itself.

Zimbra 7 delivers on

Zimbra 7 is robust, has high penetration, and boosts performance across platforms. Where it actually delivers, is the scalability. ZCS presently charges $30 for a seat for internal use and can be further lowered with greater volumes. Zimbra 7 is definitely a march over Google Apps for its open source platform

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