Re: Packaged email/collaboration software

Once upon a time (Wed Dec 01), Ramin K wrote:
> On 12/1/2010 4:41 PM, Samir Faci wrote:
>> When you run zimbra, you can't just run it on top of
>> postfix/courier/spamasssassin.  Zimbra comes
>> with their own mail server, so its in all in one boxed solution.

> Internally Zimbra *is* most of the software you're already using with a 
> custom data store and a lot of LDAP integration. I tried to pull it 
> apart a few years ago to use the web front end on top of an existing 
> virtual mail system which went nowhere quickly.

Hi,

I'm the technical guru at 01.com, a Zimbra (ZCS) hosting/services
provider. I think our marketing people would call us "the premier"
provider. I can answer questions if you have them, and our company
also has a free-trial period if you're interested in trying out a
hosted solution.

> However, just because it's tightly integrated at the service level 
> doesn't mean you can't add milters, policy servers, etc into the
> Postfix config or any other daemon config you can edit.

Yes, ZCS bundles everything together. When you install ZCS, it comes
with its own Postfix/Mysql/Amavis/OpenLDAP/libraries/the kitchen
sink. While you can make a lot of changes to the configurations for
those components, you have to be wary, as ZCS also manages those
configurations and will happily wipe out your customizations if they
are not done properly.

> At Yahoo, which owned Zimbra at the time, the decision was made to 
> stick with Exchange over Zimbra because Blackberry support was 
> unimplemented. This was about 18 months ago so things may have changed.

At that time, there was the "Zimbra Connector for Blackberry" (ZCB),
however, it was a hack and not reliable. It has matured over time
and is less of a hack and more reliable, but it is still not on par
with a standard RIM installation of BES for Exchange/Lotus/etc. ZCB
basically has to emulate being Exchange to trick BES into working,
and while that works in general, there can be issues.

Note also that Zimbra has an open-source edition, but it isn't
really an open-source project. They don't take much in the way of
code contributions from outside Zimbra (now owned by VMware). The OS
version is lacking a number of features that the paid version has,
but is still a good solution for collaboration.

Regarding the Zimbra Desktop, that is actually an installation of ZCS
on your local machine -- it installs the JVM container (jetty) and
basically ships with the same code as the full blown ZCS server. There
is a sync logic that essentially mirrors the data from the server side
on your local machine, so you can use the data disconnected. Changes
will be queued and sync'ed with the server when you re-connect. It
doesn't require an account with a ZCS server either -- it can work
with other providers merely as a local caching mail client.

Larry
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