Zimbra is both a company and the software made by the company. Founded on Christmas of 2003 and having raised more than $30M and reached self-sustainability in only a few years, Zimbra is a software manufacturer based in San Mateo, California. Purchased by Yahoo! in September of 2007, and as of August 2007 supporting more than 8 million paid mailboxes not including their summer 2007 deal for Comcast’s MM customers, Zimbra’s primary product is the Zimbra Collaboration Suite (ZCS), a server-based groupware product that started by providing web-based enterprise e-mail, calendaring, and contact sharing.
As of Zimbra 5, released Dec 31, 2007, offline and online ZCS delivers document sharing/versioning, file sharing, secure auditable chat, task lists, and SOX/HIPPA-compliant archiving. ZCS’ primary online (SaaS) competitor is Google Apps, and off-line competitors are Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes, differentiating itself by delivering an innovative, secure, rich experience through the web first, data portability, open customization/integration, and also providing multi-platform desktop and PDA synchronization to iPhone, Blackberry, Windows Mobile and Palm OS devices.
The Zimbra web experience is the same across Windows, Mac and Linux through your favorite web browser, and also synchronizes with popular desktop clients including Outlook, Mail.app, iCal, AddressBook, Evolution (open source) and Thunderbird. The Zimbra server software runs on Red Hat Linux, Mac OS, and Linux variants. Zimlets are open-source based Zimbra plug-ins that extend Zimbra’s capabilities by integrating third-party applications, services and data sources.
In September 2008, AINEO management adopted Zimbra into our AINEO Secure service line. The AINEO Networks team was originally rolled onto Zimbra server clusters with intensions of going back to Exchange. After using Zimbra, our management team proclaimed, “Finally, the network is the computer”. Other users in media, interactive, and our NPO were rolled onto Zimbra. We are Zimbra fans!
More information-
On Wikipedia
What’s different about Zimbra?
Zimbra Awards