[KevinH]

Originally Posted by jwhitfield

Demand for Outlook 2000 compatibility may seem low...but that's probably because there aren't many yet that are seriously looking at Zimbra as an alternative. That could change provided you give future customers the option. Research has shown that there are many small to medium sized businesses that still use Office 2000. The reason why so many still use it is simply because many administrators and business owners simply aren't compelled to spend the money to upgrade to something like Office 2003. It's the old "If it ain't broke, why fix it?" mentality.

Many customers today are choosing to use the AJAX web client. You get full Outlook/Exchange like feature set but with zero-admin and zero-footprint.

Originally Posted by jwhitfield

In my case, I can't very well convince my managers to upgrade to Office 2003 simply because it'll work with Zimbra...that's not even an option right now. The upgrade alone would probably cost us around anywhere from $6000 to $10000 for 75 mixed licenses of Office 2003 Standard and Professional. That's a pretty serious chunk of change just to allow our uses the ability to take full advantage of everything Zimbra has to offer. If I presented this idea to them then they definitely will not go for it simpley because, in the end, going with Zimbra would cost more initially that going with Exchange 2003...which is what they're deadset on anyways.

Were finding that many enterprises are keeping there software a bit more up-to-date(Outlook 2000 being 2 versions back). Outlook 2003 has been out for quite some time so those that have not already upgraded are doing so. We'd rather spend engineering effort on new and innovative features which push enterprise messaging forward than trying to backport to older released products initially. That said if we hear more interest in Outlook 2000 or Outlook XP support we will make priority adjustments.

Originally Posted by jwhitfield

Using POP/IMAP isn't even an option. My managers want Exchange-like functionality...the ability to have integrated e-mail, calandering, public folders, calander and e-mail sharing, hot-sync with PDA phones, the works...pretty much all that Exchange has to offer. IMAP won't allow for this in the same manner that a proper Outlook connector does.

What are you using today that gives you Exchange-like features? Your first post said you don't want to consider Exchange but I'm curious what solution you have in place today that gives you the feature set you require?