Zimbra Email and Collaboration Server
Zimbra Server is the core of Zimbra Collaboration Server; it is designed with an extremely stable and modular architecture using proven open source technologies. Zimbra Server provides tremendous flexibility because it contains all of the components necessary to run your Linux or Mac based email and calendar messaging infrastructure out of the box; it also connects to just about every popular end-user client through the many standard protocols it supports.
Interoperability with Exchange and Other Collaboration Platforms
A common problem with existing software investments is smoothly transitioning to new technologies. Zimbra provides many compatibility solutions for these scenarios, ranging from migration tools to Zimbra Server interoperability with Microsoft Active Directory and Exchange for mixed deployments.
Integrating Microsoft Active Directory
When Active Directory (AD) is the existing or preferred directory solution, you can easily choose to use this instead of Zimbra LDAP (which is included with ZCS). Configuring AD can be quickly done via the ZCS Administration Console. AD can be used for authentication, objects (conference rooms, etc) and global address list (GAL).
Learn more about the Zimbra Administration Console.
Microsoft Exchange Server Interoperability
Zimbra Collaboration Server (ZCS) provides an open and extensible 2-way framework for sharing calendar information with other collaboration platforms. This enables users on different systems to share schedules, free-busy information and resources such as conference rooms. This is ideal in larger multi-department deployments or in cases where gradual migration of users to Zimbra is required.
ZCS is currently interoperable with Microsoft Exchange 2003 and 2007. All that is required is minimal configuration in the Zimbra Administration Console and in Active Directory. Zimbra end users can use either the Zimbra Web Client or Microsoft Outlook (conversely Exchange users also can use Outlook).
Interop works in both ZCS Open Source and Network Edition and is free; plus the framework is available for those who wish to extend interoperability to other platforms of their choice such as IBM Domino, Novell GroupWise, or MeetingMaker.
Learn more about interoperability configuration.
For questions and support please use the Zimbra Forum.