In the scramble to provide Internet applications, one service seems to have been overlooked. Email management.

But slowly an Open Source email collaboration package that integrates into hosted CRM solutions like SalesForce has been gaining ground. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Zimbra.

While application providers have rushed out low cost Internet versions of software that used to cost more than the gross national product of a small country, email has stayed glued to the desktop. Webmail has offered a poor user experience. But not any more…

Mail – the last bastion of desktop complexity

Microsoft as everyone knows is obsessed with adding features that no one seems to have asked for and very often simply get in the way of personal productivity. The prime example of this has to be the evil twins of Exchange and Outlook 2007.

Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 is so bloated and complex that few administrators understand or dare implement its vast array of features. In fact despite its much vaunted mobile messaging marketing hype, few organisations risk deploying Outlook Web Access (OWA) in case the server is compromised, bringing the enterprise crashing down.

Outlook takes longer to open than Windows used to take to boot up and still can’t schedule meetings with anyone outside of the local mail server’s organisation. In today’s mobile enterprise, that’s just not acceptable.

Zimbra Collaboration Suite

Zimbra changes everything. Written from the outset as an Internet or hosted environment, it provides all the rich mail experience users could expect from a well-deployed local server. But then it takes mail a giant step beyond. It collaborates. With CRM, with phone services, with your calender and with your free and busy list.

Embedded information in a message can be automatically recognised and passed across to other applications like SalesForce, for example.

Features that are useful, not just confuse you

While Exchange 2007 has features that try to solve problems that don’t exist, like embedded voicemail when everyone has voicemail on their phone already, Zimbra has things you will want to use every day.

Zimbra is AJax enabled, so text within a message is active. In conversation mode, hovering over a section in a message extracts the properties from the item. For example, a phone number shown can be dialed, a person’s contact details shown, or a map viewed for an address. Even purchase order numbers can be recognised and worked on.

One of the cleverest Zimbra features is the scheduler. This recognises a date in a mail and brings up your diary, showing what you’re doing that day. You can choose to create a shared calender as well, so external partners know when to arrange meetings with you.

Anyone who’s struggled to manage schedules, contact lists and other collaboration features when working with business partners will relate to this instantly. Then add the fact that Zimbra is usually installed in bullet-proof hosting environments that offer virtual 100% up-time yet still cost a fraction of Exchange per-user costs and you’ll be left gasping.

A future secured

Hardly a week goes by without news of one of the software or Internet monoliths acquiring an emerging web application provider. Google with Postini and GreenBorder, Adobe with Virtual Ubiquity and Buzzword. Zimbra is the latest player to be grabbed. Yahoo have just bought them.

All this illustrates how the world is moving to Internet working. There is now the real promise that in a few years time, the idea of being tied to a desktop dominated by overblown, expensive local software written by Microsoft, SAP, etc., will be as alien as black and white television is today.

With Zimbra, there is a way to provide email to a mobile user base at a cost attractive to both small businesses and enterprises alike. If you’ve responsibility for setting an IT strategy for your business and you look at just one solution this year, check out Zimbra. You’ll be amazed, I guarantee it.

Take the Zimbra tour here. Just click here!

Off-line working

Of course, the downside of Internet-based email is off-line working, or rather the lack of it. Zimbra features an optional desktop client that works off-line and synchronises with the on-line host when a connection is re-established. Another example of how Zimbra features mirror real-life requirements.

A hosted email solution for every business, no matter what size

Zimbra offers a real alternative to locally deployed Exchange servers. The number of suppliers offering the hosted service is growing daily. With Yahoo now at the helm, the marketing of email’s best-kept secret will stamp Zimbra firmly on the technology road map. Will it be on yours?

If you want to discuss a mail strategy for your organisation, or want to know more about the options available, get in touch with me and we’ll get you and your partners talking!

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