Zimbra is a fast-growing competitor to Microsoft Exchange with more than 55 million paid mailboxes globally and some multiple of that in free mailboxes provided via their unpaid open source version. Full Disclosure: More than two years ago we chose Zimbra for our own use, and soon thereafter became a Zimbra Premiere hosting provider.

We don’t play favorites here at Reliable Networks, and we think Exchange 2007 and Exchange 2010 are very good products, much improved over Exchange 2003 and earlier versions. We support Exchange at our clients as well as Zimbra; which platform they choose is based on each client’s unique needs.

VMware is now headed by Paul Maritz, who many pundits feel left Microsoft in a “three’s a crowd” situation nearly a decade ago.

Zimbra has been taking away some very big Exchange accounts from Microsoft since being acquired by Yahoo, and we expect that trend will accelerate with Zimbra now under the VMware umbrella.

So the good news for clients is that, when it comes time to upgrade your old Microsoft Exchange installation, you now have more interesting options than you did yesterday.

And watching the action as VMware and Microsoft compete on this new front, at least to techo-heads like us, is more entertaining than a new season of American Idol!

If you have questions about your email/collaboration choices, give us a call at (207) 772-5678. Zimbra isn’t for everyone, but neither is Exchange. We’ll help you make the choice that’s right for your company.

All the best,
Mark
CIO

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 12th, 2010 at 5:50 PM and is filed under Reliable Networks News, Technology News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.