When it comes to hosted email, why zig when you can zag? That explains the strategy at EtomicMail, a managed service provider that’s hosting Zimbra — an open source email platform — rather than Microsoft Exchange.
Here’s a look at EtomicMail’s strategy, and the potential lessons learned for rival managed service providers.
Lots of MSPs are focused on Microsoft at the moment, because the software giant earlier this month announced its partner and pricing strategy for hosted Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft Dynamics CRM and SharePoint.
But EtomicMail isn’t getting caught up in the Microsoft buzz. Based in San Diego, EtomicMail says it has been managing email for customers since 2001. But this isn’t another Microsoft Exchange or Lotus Notes story. Rather, EtomicMail embraced Zimbra — the open source email platform that Yahoo acquired in September 2007.
Zimbra is particularly popular within colleges and universities, which need to balance collaboration with scalability, security and privacy. As of mid-2007, more than 100 colleges were running Zimbra. Today, that figure exceeds 300 colleges, notes Matt Asay at CNet.
Another reason Zimbra has become popular: It’s cross-platform, running on Windows, Linux or even Apple servers.
Meanwhile, Back At EtomicMail
With an eye on Zimbra, EtomicMail designed a range of email hosting and archiving solutions under a managed services framework. Also, EtomicMail partnered with MX Logic and several of MSP-centric software providers.
Translation: EtomicMail, like many progressive MSPs, is snapping together multiple components (Zimbra, MX Logic, etc.) to offer customized managed services to their customers.
I’ve sent EtomicMail a quick note requesting an update on their hosted Zimbra email strategy. I’ll report back as soon as I hear more.
Posted In: Software as a Service and Hardware as a Service
Tags: EtomicMail | Exchange Server | Hosted Exchange | Microsoft | Microsoft Online Services | Open Source Email | Stamford University | Zimbra
Interact: Add a Comment | Trackback Link | Permalink
Share: digg | del.icio.us | Technorati | StumbleUpon
Subscribe: RSS Feed
It wouldn’t be fair to mention Zimbra without also mentioning Citadel [http://www.citadel.org] which unlike Zimbra is true open source (Zimbra requires $$$ to get a non-crippled version). Check it out, it’s a very unique approach to collaboration and people who try it once tend to get addicted.
I agree with the previous poster. Citadel is a true open source “exchange killer”. Zimbra is nice, but with it being acquired by Yahoo! and now Microsoft trying to buy up Yahoo!, who knows what the future holds for Zimbra. I have a feeling if Microsoft gets involved, it will quietly be put down..
Does Citadel give away for free the non-open-source $$$ features that Zimbra charges for? ActiveSync, Outlook plugin, etc?
If the free “crippleware” version of Zimbra is more full-featured than Citadel, color me unimpressed with Citadel…
Caldwell: I don’t have an answer on that but I’m checking in with Citadel.
I’ve been watching the various alternatives to exchange a while now, and trying to decide when to start a service offering around a hosted email, or possibly a non MS Exch email/collaboration solution. Running down a list of current clients, I figure half could effetively use gmail’s business offering instead of their exchange systems in place with no real loss of function (I’m basing this upon how they use exchange now, not what it is capable of). Initially, I thought that would be like cutting off an arm, revenuewise, when it hit me, we don’t make any more money on clients with Exch vs. those without (other than once in a while product sales, which isn’t where our profits lie anyway). Anyone else gone down this road?
My understanding is that Zimbra is not convinced that they can legally open source ActiveSync As that uses a Microsoft library.
Zimbra’s philosophy is that if you need closed source software to use a feature they will offer it only as closed source, if you can use it with open source software it will be in the community edition.
One issue is the Yahoo public license does not conform to the Debian Free Software definition.
The last I heard Yahoo was expected to come into compliance with the DFS definition.
(It was based on a reading of the license that says something that a lay person would not get from the license.)
Hi Micheas: I’m not an expert on open source licenses, etc., but i will check in with Zimbra on this to see if I can learn more and share the info with our readers.
IGnatius T Foobar and William Hanna call Citadel an “exchange killer”. Well, just try out the web interfaces from Citadel and Zimbra and you will understand immediately why Citadel is going nowhere. If they could fix that it might be another story.
It is also too bad none of the “big” open-source names with nice and easy web-interfaces for management (zimbra, kolab, opengroupware etc.) could not focus a little on the integration of samba into their interfaces. THAT would be a sure killer app. (it is not that it can’t be done, LAM (ldap account manager) is doing a more than decent job (just wonder if there will be a possibility to manage zimbra accounts as well..))
Hey John Doe: I don’t believe there are any “Exchange killers” out there. But I do believe there are good customer and MSP choices emerging. While the 1990s were dominated by Exchange and Lotus Notes/Domino (for the most part), MSPs and Web hosts can test and tinker with a lot of modern open source options as well, and Zimbra is the one I keep hearing most about.
In response to John Doe,
Zimbra has an Admin extension for managing Samba accounts.
Also note that there’s a list of Zimbra authorized hosting and managed services partners on Zimbra’s site, here:
http://www.zimbra.com/partners/zimbra_hosting.html
@john doe
Thousands of delighted system administrators and millions of happy users disagree with you. “Going nowhere” couldn’t be farther from the truth. Citadel has experienced tremendous levels of adoption over the last two years.
Perhaps you were expecting Citadel to be a feature-for-feature clone of Exchange, in which case you will be disappointed. Citadel is an Exchange killer, not an Exchange clone. We maintain that Exchange’s feature set is just plain wrong for most organizations, and instead take a more user-focused approach to collaboration. Many who try it find, after a short learning curve, that they can’t live without it.
If Zimbra works for you, then go ahead and use it. Zimbra is welcome to continue their uphill battle of trying to go head-to-head with Microsoft in the enterprise market while pretending to be an open source company. Citadel and Kolab will continue the practice of being true end-to-end open source while aiming squarely at the mid-size organizations that Microsoft has left behind.