Some notable enhancements in 6.0.6 are:

Zimbra Web Client. When inviting people to a meeting, the originator can specify whether the invitee’s attendance is required or optional. This is set in the New Appointment Schedule tab. (Bug 10192)

(Beta in 6.0.6) The ZCS administration console can now be used from Apple Safari and Google Chrome browsers. (Bug 10573)

Zimbra Web Client. Users can now add .ics attachments to their calendar directly from the email message. An Add to Calendar link displays in the message header when an .ics file is received. (Bug 27959, 17768)

ZWC Calendar. It is now possible to set up Calendar Invite filter rules that filter either invites or replies. (Bug 42856).

CardDAV support for Apple Address Book in Mac OS X 10.6.3. To setup go to the Apple Address Book Preferences folder, Account tab and select the option for CardDAV. Enter your server address. (http or https://: (Bug 22008)

Zimbra to Join VMware: 2010 Will Accelerate Growth

http://www.zimbrablog.com/blog/archives/2010/01/zimbra-to-join-vmware.html

We are very encouraged by this news. VMWare and Zimbra are a smart fit. VMWare has assured Zimbra’s community, customers and partners that they are 100% committed to Zimbra’s mission.

Yahoo! was a great partner to Zimbra in that they didn’t get too involved, but provided the necessary financial backing to allow Zimbra to grow, and grow it has: In just five years, Zimbra has grown to become one of the largest email and collaboration providers in the world with Microsoft and IBM, totalling more than 55 million paid mailboxes at over 150 thousand organisations worldwide – that’s upwards of 80% year-over-year growth.

Given that Yahoo! eventually decided to divest itself of noncore businesses, the decision to sell Zimbra was expected and VMware is a brilliant choice. Yahoo!’s consumer mail continues to benefit from Zimbra technologies while Zimbra benefits from the strength and enhanced integration into VMWare’s vSphere cloud. Zimbra products were designed from the ground up with virtualisation and the cloud in mind, with a modular architecture and APIs to allow distributed access to data and storage. Email and collaboration services have always been ubiquitous to organisations, but now the barriers to transitioning them to efficient virtualised environments are coming down.

Over the last few years VORARI have done a number of on premise Vmware Zimbra deployments for our customers, providing expert management and monitoring of these systems and we look forward to higher levels of integration between the two platforms going forward. Many of our customers have also asked for managed VMware deployments within 3rd party data-centres - and is this part of VMWare’s strategy of enabling hosting providers.

With this acquisition VMWare is embracing a broader platform strategy, to the degree to that VMware wants to own an entire stack - known colloquially as the SPI stack - short for SaaS (Software as a Service), PaaS (Platform as a Service) and IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service)

As a managed services provider - VORARI leverages cloud data centres both public and private and employs cloud tools and technologies to streamline operations, development, workflow systems and ultimately our customers peace of mind.

We focus on collaborative email and core IT services like directory services, identity management and file management and provide sophisticated on-boarding tools to help get our customers data into the cloud.

While these technology areas are common to companies both large and small, they are no longer strategic in a day to day operational capacity in that they are consuming increasing amounts of IT time and money. Further more - IT departments efforts today need to be directed at integration, workflow and automation. VORARI takes away our customers immediate pain of day to day management and works with them to define and create value added web service integrations.

We look forward to seeing new bundled service capabilities between Zimbra and VMWare.

Institute of Physics
76 Portland Place
London
W1B 1NT

Zimbra Sync Services for OS-X:

The Zimbra plugin for OS-X Sync services as you might expect is 32 bit.  So in the new Snow Leopard system preferences pane, when you try to access it you will be presented with a friendly dialog asking you to reload in 32 bit:

Other than that the plugin seems to work fine.

Zimbra Desktop (Mac)

This one was interesting.  We have only had the chance to confirm this on a single mac - but after the upgrade Zimbra Desktop wouldn’t load, yielding a non-descript javascript error.  We ended up reinstalling it and worked fine.

*Update* Zimbra 1.0.3 has been released which resolves this issues.

Mozilla claims Firefox 3.5 to be the best performing browser Mozilla has ever released.  The newest version of Firefox is more than two times faster than Firefox 3 and ten times faster than Firefox 2 on complex websites.  Like the new version of Safari, it includes a new javascript treewalker - delivering radically improved JavaScript performance.  The improved Javascript performance was quite a welcome improvement to have in Zimbra’s Admin web client - an area that in not currently supported by WebKit at the moment.  The overall web interface itself is fast - although I prefer using Safari on the Mac for day to day business email.  Overall we found the interface to be faster to navigate.

The other area that we are really excited about is native JSON support and Location Aware Browsing and the opportunities to use Zimlets that take advantage of this capability.

For more information please see http://www.mozilla-europe.org/en/press/2009/06/30/1293-mozilla-advances-the-web-with-firefox-35

The full day will bring together innovative and influential senior executives, entrepreneurs and investors from a diverse range of businesses affected by digital technology. The purpose of the event is to help attendees develop the knowledge base required to be successful with international business in the digital age.

Being-Digital ‘09 will offer you a full day with opportunities to:

• Learn about what it takes to be successful in digital from some of the most influential people in the global industry
• Debate interactively during the sessions with live questions from the audience including input from SMS and Twitter
• Understand the major digital trends that are shaping international businesses today with insights from people shaping the industry, big corporate company strategies, and the most innovative new early stage companies
• Evaluate how to use trends in the digital world to increase the chances of success with your business strategy, both at home and abroad
• Network with key players that are shaping digital businesses around the world

All Delegates will also receive a £40 voucher for virtual office services from eOffice and all food and drink for the day is included in the price of admission.

For more information please visit http://www.being-digital.com/

RPost’s Patented Registered E-mail Service—Now Made Available in Zimbra’s Webmail Client by VORARI—is a Very Low Cost Tool that Reduces Risk in Disputes Involving E-mail, Giving Senders the Upper Hand with Certified Delivery Evidence, Tracking and E-mail Content Proof

Los Angeles and London—- May 26, 2009—- RPost®, the leader in value-added outbound messaging with its flagship Registered E-mail® service suite, and VORARI, a managed cloud services provider in London, today announced a partnership to offer RPost’s Registered E-mail® delivery proof, eSignOff™ electronic contracting, SideNote™, and Proof Archive™ services to VORARI’s clients.

“VORARI is working with select partners to build out and integrate high value web-services into the messaging experience using Zimbra, as part of their Zimlet eco-system.  RPost is a brilliant example of an enterprise class Zimlet that offers genuine value to people looking to` save costs by using technology instead of paper,” remarks Nagib Tharani, director at VORARI.
RPost’s core Registered E-mail® service provides the sender legally valid and court admissible evidence of e-mail correspondence occurring from the sender’s desktop e-mail or directly from applications—providing VORARI clients with evidence of delivery, content, and timing of any e-mail, without requiring recipients to download any software, click links, or visit special websites to open and read messages. RPost offers additional services, such as eSignOff™ electronic contract execution service, which enables a one-click-signoff-by-email with an evidentiary record of the signoff provided to both parties that has evidential weight equal to “wet-ink” signatures on contracts– eliminating the print/sign/scan/fax/mail signoff process. The complete RPost platform is offered at a flat per e-mail price, which is about the cost of a postage stamp and only a small fraction of typical courier charges. Monthly and annual all-inclusive services plans are also available.

“Since with two clicks of a mouse, one can change any email to say anything, the other party in an e-mail misunderstanding can easily claim that the printed e-mail records misrepresent the facts. Verification of e-mail evidence is certainly becoming a central part of discovery disputes in Europe, as it has in the US, especially as users are working to convert more high value correspondence from paper to e-mail,” remarks Zafar Khan, CEO of RPost. “We have found that many professionals are simply not aware of this exposure.  We are pleased to be able to provide RPost’s total risk protection and efficiency services embedded within users’ existing VORARI-managed e-mail experience.”

For the highest assurance of confidentiality, the RPost system does not retain a copy of the original Registered E-mail message, unlike alternative “store and forward” solutions. RPost services also include one-click tools for electronic contracting and e-signing, end-to-end e-mail encryption, PDF conversion and data leak protection in an all-in-one, on demand service offering.

About VORARI: Established in 2007 and based in London, VORARI deploys production-grade services for businesses in the cloud, offering cost-effective, scalable, reliable and secure solutions. VORARI builds solutions around Zimbra’s collaboration suite, an open source alternative to Microsoft Exchange and Sharepoint as a collaborative hub for public and private clouds.  Backed by Yahoo! and built from the ground up to support web services, Zimbra’s Zimlet architecture provides the ultimate framework for accessing, interfacing with and manipulating data by enabling businesses to seamlessly integrate both existing and emerging cloud services around an open-source collaboration platform.  VORARI provides these services to enterprises and ISP’s across Rackspace, VMware and Amazon’s EC2.  VORARI also provides development services to service providers looking to expose their services as Zimlets.  For more information about VORARI please visit http://www.vorari.com.  Media Enquiries: pr@vorari.com. +44 203 002 3671.

About RPost: RPost has set the global standard for Legal Proof® in Internet e-mail with its core Registered E-mail® proof of legal delivery and eSignOff™ electronic contracting services. RPost services permit the sender to prove, sign, secure, record, and collaborate with less cost, time, paper and risk. Available in eight languages and for all e-mail platforms, RPost’s Registered E-mail® services have been granted 19 patents, have been used daily by the United States Government since 2003, and have been endorsed and marketed by most of the influential bar associations in the United States, including the bars of New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, Boston, and the District of Columbia. Headquartered in Los Angeles, RPost has offices worldwide. For more information about RPost, please visit http://www.rpost.com . “Registered E-mail”, “R-mail”, “RPost” and “Legal Proof” are among the registered trademarks owned by RPost. Media Contact: Aparna Glynn, Marketing Director, (310) 342-0088, aglynn@rpost.com

This mashup* event will focus on which are the best applications to run in/on the cloud and which ones locally and why!  Like outsourcing, not everyone should do it, not every service is sensible and there are stong opinions in both camps.

The debate will cover data ownership, security, privacy, backup, staffing, policy and governance.  There are many applications that should run on the cloud but is company policy protecting the directors or delivering shareholder return?

In assoication with: Sun Microsystems Ltd.

Location:

Regis House
45 King William Street
London
EC4R 9AN

You might find a lot of service providers in the UK numbers that start with 08x - like 0800, 0808, 0870 and 0845.  You see these numbers everywhere these days. These are non geographic numbers.  In other words you can offer your service all over the UK and be perceived as a national player, even though you might be based in a single town.  These number also tend to be memorable.

0800 and 0808 are Freephone numbers.  That is - they are free to call in the UK from any landline.

A new crop of numbers were introduced - called 084x and 087x numbers.  These numbers are revenue-share numbers.  To the business procuring them, they are told that end users prefer a memorable 084x or 087x number.  And because these are revenue share numbers, they can make money when you call them.  Keeping customers on hold for just 15 minutes for a 10ppm call can really add up.  Many providers are now using these 0870 and 0845 numbers.  Banks and tech support lines are particularly fond of them.  (You might notice a true 0800 or 0808 Freephone for sales inquiries and and 0870/0845 number for support.)  And to an increasing extent, we’re also seeing them make their way into small businesses and the sole means of contact.  This is wrong.

This is a key point - you need the 08x number to route to geographic phone number.  Many UK organisations which previously could be reached by a geographical number now only publish an 0845 number.  Now you know why!

The original idea was that if you are a large organization with many shops, you can have a single memorable number that is routed to the location nearest the caller and still be charged a local rate.  Those rules changed in 2004: it is now cheaper to call a normal an 01/02 number direct.  Most people with a basic phone package even have unlimited calls to 01/02 numbers.

There are several sites which provide more information on the subject:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/0845_number
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/0870_number
• http://www.saynoto0870.com

Charges paid by the caller for 084x/087x calls are set by each phone company individually. Charges can vary greatly, especially when the call originates from a UK mobile or a non-UK number

Not all numbers are created equal.  0800 and 0808 are Freephone numbers.  These numbers mean you pay for your customers to call you.  But while they are completely free within the UK, if they are called by mobiles or VoIP providers (like Skype or Vonage), they too may be much more expensive.

For this reason, we want to be accessible to all our customers.  Within the UK you can call us on Freephone 0808-1-VORARI (0808-1-86.72.74) - which we hope is memorable.  But from your mobile or abroad - you can call us on +44 203 002 3761.  Ideally we hope you’ll use our landline number - as it is cheaper for us, but we will never try to extort money from you.

We refuse to do business with companies that only have an 084x/087x numbers - we value our customers.

More importantly, it only supports their iPhone, so mobile clients other than the iPhone are out of luck.  I love the iPhone - and I can’t wait to get their 3G version, and this might not really be a decision for a family either - just be sure that all your family members have iPhones too. But it doesn’t cut it as a business platform where you have to accept diversity in clients.

“Exchange for the rest of us” is more apt in reference to Zimbra.

Zimbra lets you share files with your colleagues - but it offers you the ability to password protect the access, or to make your files public.

They support a wide variety of mobile clients, including the iPhone.

They allow you book appointments and check other folks schedules before putting out a meeting invitation.

And it works seamlessly with Outlook, provides native OS-X sync services support and even supports Linux clients.  Not to mention the award winning AJAX browser interface both online and off-line.  True freedom of choice.

At a similar price point per user per month.

Need to collaborate with others?  Try Zimbra.