Developped by Zimbra, a subsidary of Vmware Inc., this solution is the Microsoft Exchange killer application.

Today, there is no enterprise that can live without an e-mail server and a shared agenda. E-mail is now a communication media more used than the phone. This make the collaboration server a more and more critical tool for the enterprises. But in paralell, collaboration is becoming a commodity for the enterprises.

As a result, the collaboration solution must :

• deploy easily
• not be a monolithic software, but able to be distributed on different server to provide high-availability
• provide migration tools
• support all standard protocols and interact with various kind of client software
• easy to use, easy to manager
• integrate into an existing infrastructure to reuse user definitions and authentication

And the Zimbra Collaboration Suite is all of these. Among his major features, we can note :

• Higher enduser productivity
  
  • Rich Web 2.0/Ajax user interface with support for search, tagging, RSS, VoIP integration, etc.
  • Extensible mash-up/portlet architecture (Zimlets) for integrating a broad range of intranet and Internet applications and services.
    
  • Support for a broad range of email clients (Microsoft Outlook, Apple Desktop, Linux) and mobile devices (PDA, Smartphones, Blackberry, Windows Mobile, ...)  via "over the air" sync.
  • Easy "reskinning" and rebranding of the Zimbra UI to enhance the end-user's brand.
• Low total cost of ownership (TCO)
  
  • Software appliance for decreased administrative overhead
  • Server consolidation based on performance, scalability, and increased functionality.
  • Native support for volume and hierarchical storage management (HSM) to accommodate large quotas on commodity storage.
  • Native cross-mailbox search for litigation discovery, policy, and compliance.
  • Native anti-spam (AS) and anti-virus (AV) support.
  • Strong internet-based security (SSL/TLS for all protocols) that does not require a VPN.

Zimbra offers also a competitive cost compared to other commercial applications and offers also a protection of the enduser's investment

• ZCS is itself open source.
• ZCS leverages mature open source server infrastructure - Linux/Unix file system for the message store, MySQL for meta-data storage, Apache for web container, Lucene for search, etc. (See the Zimbra Architecture Overview for more detail.)
• ZCS supports standard protocols for interoperability - POP3, IMAP4, iCalendar, HTTP/S, REST, RSS, MAPI, iSync, and so on.
• All ZCS operations and network protocols use open XML/SOAP for easy bi-directional integration with business applications (whether on-premises or hosted).
• Integration with existing directory, security (AS/AV), and compliance infrastructure.
• Zimbra uses standard MIME format for storing messages on disk (one message/file), which means the formats are open to operating system utilities and scripts.
• Zimbra worked in collaboration with IBM to co-found the Open Ajax Alliance to ensure that Web 2.0/Ajax solutions like Zimbra remain viable across devices, operating systems, browsers, and languages, just as is the case for the World-wide Web.

For more information about Zimbra Collaboration Suite, you can go directly to the web site of Zimbra.