Roj’s Tech Corner

It’s good that there is finally some real competition to Exchange Server now. A couple months ago I replaced our POP3/IMAP post office with Zimbra. I was originally going to go with Scalix but after seeing that Zimra had a single-store message and a decent Outlook connector that was in better shape than the buggy one Scalix was selling, along with the rapid development being done with Zimbra, the choice was pretty simple.

Zimbra has passed 6 million paid mailboxes and has recently signed a deal with Comcast to be the post office for all of their subscribers. Apparently I’m not the only one who likes Zimbra.

After completing our migration and working through some of the issues, here’s my observations on it so far. First the good:

1. Excellent migration utilities. The importing of of PST files went flawlessly. It was so simple that after writing a wiki page with instructions on how to do it, 80% of the office did the import on their own.
2. The Outlook connector is functional to the point of users not noticing much difference between using it and having an Exchange Server for a back end.
3. The web interface is highly functional. Searches are extremely fast due to the indexing being done on the server. Can even search within attachments
4. The mobile sync functionality works great. Palm and Windows CE hand-helds see the server as an Active Sync Exchange Server and happily sync the user’s mailbox, calendar, and contacts. Calendar items even adjust for changes in time zones as the person travels across them.
5. Multiple calendars. Enough said.

Now the not so good:

1. Outlook client code is still immature. The latest release introduced a “feature” that removed all reminders from an Outlook user’s calendar. Not a pleasant surprise. Given that the Outlook connector is what they are making money from, they might want to take better care of it.
2. Web interface needs someone with some graphic arts touch to sprucen it up. Obviously the focus has been on functionality. They might want to think about hiring such a person.
3. Releases are not fully tested. The last upgrade I did ended up wiping out all the zimlets (plugin code that adds functionality to Zimbra). I lost the license the server was running under, all backup functionality, etc. Required manually reinstalling all of them.
4. No per-item calendar reminders. This is almost a requirement in an office. I believe they are slating on adding it in version 5.0 but it can’t come too soon.
5. On the line calendars, Zimbra does not support private appointments or contacts. This is needed when everyone is sharing calendars.
6. SOFTWARE RENTAL. You have to grit your teeth and swallow signing up for a rental agreement on the software license. Hopefully they will trash this and go with standard version licensing, especially since when receiving some of their releases we’re ending up being beta testers for it.

Even though Zimbra has some rough edges and some bumps in the road, I still recommend it. The product should continue to mature and the immaturity that goes along with a start-up company (inadequate testing, UI design, etc) will disappear. The road ahead looks good, which was the final reason that I did go with the product.