I'm a huge fan of Zimbra's slick email alternative to Microsoft Outlook/Exchange, but I'll admit to being very impressed by Zarafa, a full Outlook/Exchange replacement with MAPI, Web access, iCal, and ActiveSync support. Zarafa recently became notable because the company open sourced its e-mail alternative to Microsoft Exchange/Outlook.
I spent some time with the Zarafa demo and assuming it administers as nicely as it operates for the end-user, it's a winner. Is it better than Zimbra? After all, Zimbra also has iCal, Web access, ActiveSync, etc.
It's hard to say, given that I wasn't able to put Zarafa through a full workload like I do with Zimbra each day in my work. I think the Zarafa interface is a bit cleaner than Zimbra's...
Zarafa's Web client (click to enlarge).
(Credit: Zarafa)...but one of my primary reasons for loving Zimbra is the Zimlet, making it super-easy to integrate Zimbra with third-party services and applications. (One of my solutions engineers integrated Alfresco with Zimbra in a week.) Zarafa? It is still an island of productivity, not an archipelago of connected islands like Zimbra.
Even so, it's good to see competition in this critical market segment. Despite all the hype around Twitter and other "Web 2.0" communication tools, e-mail is still the crux of enterprise communication. The more robust open-source e-mail alternatives to Exchange, the better. Welcome to the party, Zarafa.
Apparently, OpenOffice 3.0 is intent on picking a fight with Microsoft Outlook. Bonne chance, mes amis. I don't mean to imply that it can't be done, but am rather suggesting that this is not the right way to go about it. Zimbra, sure. Or Mozilla's Thunderbird (standalone), sure. But bundled into OpenOffice? I'm not seeing it.
This arises from a presentation delivered earlier this year at the OpenOffice conference:
One thing that really caught my attention was (a) reference to including a Personal Information Manager (PIM) (in OpenOffice). More specifically the presentation mentions bundling Thunderbird with their Office Suite, and refers to it as an "Outlook replacement."
Bundling a runner-up PIM/e-mail suite with a runner-up Office replacement? Not likely. Disruption is the way to go, and the combination is not disruptive.
... Read more
Zimbra has now made a great product even better. Determined to help "fat-client Luddites" like me, Zimbra has released the second version of its Ajax, offline client, Zimbra Desktop. First it was email offline, and now the calendar works offline, too. This may well be the the first major web application to go offline.
Who cares? Well, I do, and not because of Zimbra's open source credentials. The primary value I see in Zimbra is an enterprise-class email server that treats Macs and Linux as first-class citizens, rather than as an afterthought. ... Read more
- prev
- 1
- next
