Welcome!

Java Authors: Michael Sheehan, Maureen O'Gara, Jonny Defh, Suresh Krishna Madhuvarsu, RealWire News Distribution

Related Topics: Open Source, .NET, AJAX & REA

Open Source: Article

Yahoo's Zimbra Reaches Out to Microsoft

Move should encourage large enterprises and academic institutions to explore Zimbra
By Maureen O'Gara
Article Rating:
October 1, 2008 09:00 AM EDT
Reads:
 2,986

Zimbra, Yahoo's open source messaging and collaboration software company whose fate was unclear if Microsoft had bought Yahoo, says it's got a new open extension framework for its Collaboration Suite (ZCS) that will enable two-way interoperability with Microsoft Exchange.

It expects the move to encourage large enterprises and academic institutions to explore Zimbra more.

The start-up's co-founder Satish Dharmaraj said, "Interoperability with Exchange and other leading collaboration systems is a top request by many enterprises and academic institutions where mixed deployments are common." Zimbra customers include Dai Nippon Publishing, Reliance Industries, H&R Block, and Texas A&M University.

The first extension, built by Zimbra for Exchange 2003 and now in beta, will let Zimbra access and share two-way free/busy information, schedules, and global address books with Exchange. Zimbra has been integrated with Active Directory, creating a unified Global Address List (GAL) of both ZCS and Exchange users in the same deployment.

Zimbra says the Zimbra community can write extensions to other collaboration platforms such as IBM's Lotus Domino and Novell's GroupWise.

The Exchange feature works in all Zimbra clients including Zimbra's AJAX Web Client, Outlook via Zimbra Connector for Outlook, Zimbra Mobile supported devices such as BlackBerry, and Windows Mobile-based smartphones. Exchange users can use whatever client they use currently such as Outlook.

ZCS Interoperability for Exchange doesn't require any changes on the Exchange server; the service is managed in the Zimbra Administration Console.

ZCS Interoperability for Exchange is free for all ZCS Open Source and commercial Network Edition users. Zimbra Outlook Connector and Zimbra Mobile are available for ZCS Network Edition users.

Published October 1, 2008 – Reads 2,986
Copyright © 2008 SYS-CON Media, Inc. — All Rights Reserved.
Syndicated stories and blog feeds, all rights reserved by the author.

More Stories By Maureen O'Gara

Maureen O'Gara the most read technology reporter for the past 20 years, is the Cloud Computing and Virtualization News Desk editor of SYS-CON Media. She is the publisher of famous "Billygrams" and the editor-in-chief of "Client/Server News" for more than a decade. One of the most respected technology reporters in the business, Maureen can be reached by email at maureen(at)sys-con.com or paperboy(at)g2news.com, and by phone at 516 759-7025.

Comments (0)

Share your thoughts on this story.

Add your comment
You must be signed in to add a comment. Sign-in | Register

In accordance with our Comment Policy, we encourage comments that are on topic, relevant and to-the-point. We will remove comments that include profanity, personal attacks, racial slurs, threats of violence, or other inappropriate material that violates our Terms and Conditions, and will block users who make repeated violations. We ask all readers to expect diversity of opinion and to treat one another with dignity and respect.