VMware Unveils Zimbra Collaboration Suite Appliance

Aug 10, 2010

The Zimbra Collaboration Suite Appliance is an enterprise-class email and collaboration solution delivered as a virtual appliance. Designed to run on the VMware vSphere platform, the Zimbra Appliance helps reduce the cost and complexity of infrastructure management.

Zimbra which was acquired in February 2010, is now fully integrated within VMware. All Zimbra products are now available via VMware's extensive sales and channel partner ecosystem, providing VMware's 190,000 customers and 25,000 partners full access to Zimbra's email and collaboration product suite. Zimbra customers are also now supported by VMware's Global Support Services, the world's largest virtualization support organization.

Advancing Enterprise-Class Collaboration in the Cloud Zimbra Collaboration Suite Appliance is a next generation email and collaboration solution that is designed to run on VMware vSphere, VMware's award-winning virtualization platform. Customers have the flexibility to run Zimbra Appliance either within their own datacenter, or via one of VMware's more than 2,000 VMware vCloud partners who host the application as a service. Because it is delivered as a virtual appliance, customers can deploy the application faster than traditional software deployments -- within minutes instead of hours. As a result of this simplified virtual appliance model, customers and partners can manage their email and collaboration needs with fewer resources, less costs and lower risk. The Zimbra Appliance provides a personal and team cloud for the end user, administrator and datacenter.

The Zimbra Appliance leverages the best-of-breed virtualization capabilities of the VMware vSphere platform to enable dynamic provisioning and scalability, high availability, backup, and disaster recovery. As a result, customers can improve service levels by reducing the impact of planned and unplanned hardware downtime. The Zimbra Appliance also features integrated security technologies including a firewall, anti-virus and anti-spam solutions.

"We're excited about the opportunity to provide VMware customers worldwide with Zimbra's best-in-class email and collaboration solution paired with VMware vSphere's leading virtualization platform," said Jim Morrisroe, Zimbra General Manager. "The Zimbra Collaboration Suite Appliance delivers customers secure email with the assurance that their data is protected on our VMware vSphere virtualization platform, and a collaboration solution that they can fully deploy in a matter of minutes -- literally going from install to inbox in less than ten minutes."

"Zimbra Collaboration Suite combined with VMware vSphere enables us to offer our customers the best of both worlds -- a leading email and collaboration solution, running on the industry's most complete and widely deployed virtualization platform," said Craig McLellan, CTO at Hosting.com. "With the addition of the Zimbra Appliance, we are able to provide additional email and collaboration options for our 30,000+ clients who count on us for their critical infrastructure services."

The Zimbra Collaboration Suite Appliance features include:

-- Zimbra Email and Collaboration Server -- Complete enterprise class email and collaboration solution that includes email, contacts/address book, calendaring, document management, file sharing, tasks, and comprehensive search and indexing.

-- Zimbra Advanced Web Client -- multiple-browser, multiple-platform web-client with a rich AJAX interface delivers a robust desktop-like experience for end users.

-- Zimbra Mobile -- Native "over-the-air" synchronization to iPhone, Windows, Palm and Symbian OS Smartphones with customizable mobile security policies including remote device wipe, PINs and device management features on user accounts.

-- Easy Migration and Interoperability -- Zimbra Appliance Migration Wizard allows customers to rapidly and easily migrate from Microsoft Exchange and Domino environments; interoperability with Microsoft Exchange and other leading email clients including shared enterprise calendars and Global Address List (GAL) for mixed environments.

-- Simplified and Anywhere, Web-based Administration -- Simplified task-oriented web-based administration console enables "anywhere administration."

-- Zimbra Appliance Integrated Application Stack -- Rapid deployment of integrated operating system and application stack, combined with firewall, anti-virus and anti-spam filtering.

-- Zimbra Appliance Automated Software Updates -- Software and security updates are combined into a single lifecycle management policy, configurable from the anywhere access, web-based administration console.

-- Open Virtualization Format (OVF) packaged Virtual Appliance -- Open formats reduce the cost and complexity of provisioning and lifecycle management.

Pricing and Availability The Zimbra Collaboration Suite Appliance is currently available starting at USD $625/25 mailboxes for a perpetual license.

The full suite of Zimbra products is now available through the VMware sales and via VMware's more than 25,000 channel partners.