Messaging, Calendaring and Global Contact Lists have been the holy grail of business computing for over a decade. Since the 1990s Microsoft's Exchange Server has been the leader in providing businesses with these critical services.  However, with Yahoo's recent acquisition of the Zimbra Collaboration Server, they are now stepping up to compete with Microsoft in this realm. Read on for a detailed analysis and pretty chart of comparisons of these services.

Email is a standard form of communication for businesses and is a mission critical service for many of us today. Many businesses are now relying on shared calendars, Instant Messaging and Document storage as part of their practice as well. Using a messaging service with collaborative abilities gives your employees quick access to information that can help them perform more effectively and efficiently. They can quickly plan meetings and invite attendees, access documents, spreadsheets and presentations and chat in real time. Because it is not easy to switch providers and will cause some downtime when doing so, it is important to choose the right service for this foundation of your business.

While you could buy your own server hardware and software to run these applications, it is often wiser to spend the money on a hosted service. There are many reasons to use a hosted service. Their hardware is placed in environmentally controlled facilities with redundant power and Internet connections. They have support staff that are there 24/7, even during holidays. They perform backups and software upgrades for you and have the time and equipment to properly test these things before they are brought to live servers. 

In the following section I will be comparing services that offer collaborative messaging. I have chosen to compare hosted Zimbra to hosted Microsoft Exchange 2007. First I will give some detail on each of these services. 

Microsoft Exchange 2007

Microsoft Exchange Server is a very full featured messaging platform providing email and calendaring services, access to an Active Directory connected Global Address List for contacts and mobile device support. Microsoft Exchange 2007 provides powerful anti-spam tools, encryption through SSL and TLS and a secure web based client. Outlook Web Access is a full featured AJAX web client, which allows access to the Exchange Server from any web enabled computer using an up to date browser. Optionally, Sharepoint services can be enabled for document sharing and customized intranet sites. When using email clients, Exchange is primarily used with Microsoft Outlook, but can also be used with Microsoft Entourage and others. However, clients other than Microsoft Outlook are usually missing some of the key features of Exchange like task delegation or full integration with Sharepoint enabled websites. The following list of benefits was taken from mailtrust.com, who offer hosted Exchange services.

• Personal and Shared Calendars - Allow users to maintain their own personal calendar and share its contents with other users.
  
• Personal and Shared Contacts - Allow users to maintain their own personal contacts and share contacts with other users.
  
• Personal and Shared Tasks - Allow users to manage their own personal task lists and share them with other users.
  
• Global Address List (GAL) - Ability to create and manage a corporate address list that stores all the contacts within the organization and can be viewed by anyone in the organization.
  
• Distribution Lists - Ability to create an email address that will email a list of email addresses all at the same time.
  
• Scheduling Assistant - Helps users efficiently schedule meetings by providing visual guidance on the best and worst times to schedule meetings based on meeting invitees and required resources.
  
• Out of Office Messaging - Users can schedule out of office messaging to begin and end on specific dates and times.
  
• Public Folders - Create a folder that can share files, emails, contacts, calendar items, notes, and/or tasks with other users.

Hosting Exchange Server on your own equipment usually requires several servers and can be cost prohibitive for small to medium sized companies based on the initial hardware and software purchase cost and the expense of support staff. Using a hosted Exchange server will allow your company to realize the benefits of the software without incurring all of the costs. 

Zimbra Collaboration Suite

Zimbra Collaboration Suite is a strong competitor to Microsoft Exchange, offering all of the same features at a much lower cost. Zimbra offers an innovative Ajax based web client with search, shared calendar and email. Zimbra Collaboration Suite is fully compatible with many email clients like Apple Mail, Microsoft Outlook and Entourage, and Mozilla Thunderbird. Zimbra Collaboration Suite also offers support for your mobile devices including Blackberries and iPhones. Zimlets offer the ability to create custom application mash-ups like integrated Salesforce data or mapping data. Email is also optionally archived at the server level. The following is a list of end-user benefits that was taken from the Zimbra.com website. As you will see, Zimbra provides a very rich set of tools for messaging and collaboration. 

• Freedom of Client Choice
  • Browser - Zimbra Ajax client
  • PC Client - Outlook (Online, Offline, Cached Mode), Apple Mail and iCal, Eudora, Evolution, Thunderbird/Sunbird, RSS, etc.
  • Mobile - Wireless devices "over the air" synchronization: Blackberry (via partner solutions), Palm, Nokia, Motorola, Good, PocketPC, etc.
• Self-Organizing Mailboxes
  • Powerful, fast search (including messages and attachments)
  • Saved searches across folders
  • Conversation views across folders
  • Filters
• Comprehensive Calendaring
  • Group scheduling with free/busy management and controls
  • Multiple calendars per user
  • Calendar delegation and sharing
  • Multi-calendar views
  • Subscribe to external calendars in .ics format
• Extensible model for linking message content to external web services and applications (expressable via hover-over and/or click)
  • Intranet - ERP, CRM, Support, Finance, HR, VoIP phone, etc.
  • Internet – Google/Yahoo Maps, Skype, Travel, Package Tracking, etc.
• Efficient context switching
  • Quickly view/create calendar appointments while in mail
  • Quickly create/edit contacts while in mail
  • Quickly view sender’s website while in mail
• Any Place, Any Machine
  • Rich, zero footprint, AJAX-based end-user interface (cross browser/OS)
  • Security sans VPN
  • Secure, read-only access to attachments without special-purpose client software
• Modern collaboration styles/formats
  • RSS/ATOM feeds
  • Tags

Additionally, Zimbra is built on open source software packages, which are heavily tested and proven solutions with large existing user bases including MySQL, OpenLDAP, Apache, PHP, Verity, Lucene, ClamAV and SpamAssasin. According to CNet blogger Matt Asay, there was recently an internal message at Microsoft that is a competitive breakdown between Exchange and Zimbra where they admit to Zimbra's superiority in several areas. Perhaps this was part of the reason behind Microsoft's recent attempts to buy Yahoo?

In conclusion, while both of these collaborative messaging services appear to be very similar they in fact represent different ideas on how to provide these services. The important thing to do when comparing these services is to make sure that it will provide the right set of tools for your specific needs. Does your business only use PCs? or is it a mixed environment with PCs, Macs and Linux computers. Will Zimlets change the way your employees are doing there job or will it be a potentially useless feature? How do the security policies of your company affect network access? Technology is changing rapidly and it is important to be able to adopt technology that will benefit your business quickly, will your messaging platform allow you to do that or will it require a move to an entirely new system. 

Mazaroth IT Consultants will help you make these important decisions and implement the system that will be the best fit for you. Contact us to schedule a meeting today.