Outlook and Mobile Phones

[jeopardyracing]

I have just successfully deployed Open Source edition for my own tiny little company. We provide IT services to small business, and I loaded this software as an experiment to see if we could ever deploy this product to our clients instead of Exchange, but am I right that this version can't sync contacts and calendar to mobile phones or Outlook? Without that feature I could never convince clients to choose this over Exchange and the Professional version does not look price competitive to me compared to Exchange.

[ewilen]

Open source edition doesn't have an Outlook connector or ActiveSync. Outlook can get email from Zimbra via IMAP or POP, though.

In the future there may be ways to get Outlook to sync calendar with Zimbra, but those depend on third-party projects. If you want Outlook-like functionality, though, there may be other clients you could use such as Thunderbird + Lightning/Sunbird. Zindus has been mentioned on this forum as a tool for synching contacts with Thunderbird.

With mobile phones, it depends on the phone. iPhone 3.0 can already use IMAP or POP, and will support CalDAV which should allow calendar sync with Zimbra Open Source. iPhone 3.0 will also support LDAP which may at least give access to the global address list, but personal contacts are another story. Perhaps somebody will develop an app or a Zimbra add-on to bridge the gap but that's pure speculation.

There's also J2ME--I haven't personally explored it, don't know if it requires a paid license, but if not then it may be an option for some mobile phones.

[jeopardyracing]

Good info - thanks very much! I really like some of the functionality I am seeing this but I think the open source edition needs that functionality for me to push it.

Of course, I should be pushing the paid versions but I think the cost is far too high relative to Exchange for my little customers (typically under 35 seats) for me to ever be able to push Network Edition over Exchange. In my markets this product would need to be significantly less expensive than Exchange for me to be able to market it; there is just too much * perceived * risk of incompatibilities / problems relative to the known quantity of Exchange in order for this pricing to work relative to Microsoft. Especially considering that customers can get Exchange from an ISP like Comcast (for example) for much, much less per seat than this. I think the pricing is totally unrealistic for Network edition, but that's just my 2 cents.

Still, I will keep testing and hoping these connectors get written for Open Source or that Zimbra makes a small business edition with competitive pricing at some point. But kudos for a very attractive open source product with some nice, innovative features.

[ewilen]

(I saw a mistake in my post above, due to editing. iPhone 3.0 hasn't been released yet, when it is, it'll support CalDAV. iPhone already can get mail via IMAP or POP instead of ActiveSync.)

Right now we're looking at Zimbra vs. Exchange but this is a situation where Exchange isn't already in place. Strictly in terms of pricing for software, Zimbra is coming out ahead over 5 years. I should note that this is based on proposed license terms that aren't advertised prominently on the Zimbra site--you might want to speak to a salesperson or VAR.

I've also seen hosted Zimbra solutions mentioned on the forums. You should definitely research the provider's reputation independently, but it might be comparable or cheaper than hosted Exchange. Of course, things are changing in the Exchange world--Microsoft is making Exchange more "cloud friendly" when they release Exchange 2010.