Evaluating Zimbra vs Custom Development for CRM App: Please comment

[sanjay_arora]

Hello all

My company has started a CRM initiative and I am looking to see if Zimbra & a custom zimlet development can do the job. I am new to zimbra though have good Linux MTA Admin experience and will be defining the strategy for my company.

We require that the CRM software be able to show in a Gmail like conversation thread all mails to/from a sender in our company & a recipient in a partner company AND all mails to/from our compant & the partner company. Of course we will be mapping email address to company relation in the DB.

One choice was a SQL based mail storage application like DBmail and custom Development to integrate it into the chosen CRM application. But it will need a lot of effort in a good GUI.

Then I came across Zimbra and wondered if it could be extended to show this kind of interface, using the zimlet extensions?

Request Admins & developers please give their comments on both options & their pros & cons. I would also appreciate if someone could give broad resources to how Zimbra would search for specific matching emails.

However, no manual drag/drop, all mail gets categorized with specific contact & rest remain uncategorised, to be done manually after creation of contacts in the CRM.

Hope someone can give me the right pointers on the strategy & the Admin issues involved, post-development.

With best regards.
Sanjay.