It’s here, and it’s here in a big way – finally a Linux-based open source alternative to Microsoft Exchange good enough to call a killer application. Sporting an ultra slick AJAX web-based front end, Zimbra combines email, calendar, and directory server applications. Zimbra is fully compatible with existing desktop programs such as Outlook, Thunderbird, Apple Mail and iCal and can be extended with user developed plug-ins to create custom links to applications like Skype, Google Maps, and more.
For the developers in the crowd, Zimbra also comes with a full open source AJAX GUI framework (AjaxTK) which can be used to build your own AJAX powered web applications completely independent of Zimbra. The Zimbra home page states, “At Zimbra, our goal is to make e-mail, calendar, contacts and other communications technologies the best they can be. We believe that by opening the technology to the community we will insure that we can maximize innovation, and scale the ability to co-exist with existing messaging systems.”
Kudos to Zimbra and thank you to Kevin Yank at SitePoint for bringing this story to light in the latest issue of the SitePoint tech times. Zimbra is a huge win for the open source community. You can follow a developer community discussions at the Zimbra forum and download beta code today.
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very cool
hello:
i own the registered trademark for exchange killer.
please add a registered trademark ® symbol to your use of the term.
found at http://brianmcnitt.com/wp/?p=23
thanks,
kelley g
toasterz.com
bulldoginfo.com
easy-pbx.com
exchangekiller.com
Hello Kelley,
Your trademark is safe here — nowhere in my blog do I use the term “Exchange Killer” or “ExchangeKiller”. I refer to Zimbra as being an “open source Exchange” and a “killer application”. Given Microsoft’s dominance in the groupware market I don’t think any product will ever be a true ExchangeKiller® (<- how's that? (-; ) but I hope you prove me wrong. Cheers, Brian
Good Site! Thanks!
e-mail is such a visible and critical app. Is this app which is “open” a ~very good app or is it actually a more resilient application than Exchange? If it is more resilient, what would you base that on? Does Linux create more complexity or apprehensiveness for a network engineer to support? Is this just more of a cost saver than app killer?
Thank You