Zimbra products - future contributions and intergration

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stormpoorun
Posts: 7
Joined: Thu Oct 10, 2013 6:22 pm

Zimbra products - future contributions and intergration

Post by stormpoorun »

After a tremendouly dynamic year following the Telligent product merger, and an exciting roadmap for Zimbra Collaboration, a lot of users would be grateful few fundamental questions on the future of Zimbra products in general:

1) Names
Will Zimbra Community be renamed Zimbra Social?
Would Zimbra Sync and Share be more snappily and professionally-titled Zimbra Files?
2) Codebase
Will Zimbra Community be ported to a Linux -based codebase?
3) Opensource
Will Zimbra take Zimbra Community and Zimbra Sync and Share opensource, in the same impressive vein as you have handled Zimbra Collaboration?

4) Intergration
Will Zimbra Sync and Share integrate fully with Zimbra Briefcase (including sign-on, tags, search and users), or will it replace it, or be an entirely separate product?

5) SaaS
There are currently no SaaS offerings of Zimbra Community.
This is not helpful to small businesses, local government or organisations, or individuals.
Are any SaaS offerings on the roadmap for Zimbra Community or Zimbra Sync and Share
(For example with existing providers such as 01.com Mrmail etc...)
Are there special packages for service providers to provide combined Zimbra services to their customers?

6) Development
Will users and developers have the opportunity to contribute to Zimbra Community development as they currently can with Zimbra Collaboration?
Using: pm.zimbra.com bugzilla.zimbra.com gallery..zimbra.com

Thank you.
rhoward
Zimbra Alumni
Zimbra Alumni
Posts: 63
Joined: Tue Jul 08, 2003 12:59 pm

Zimbra products - future contributions and intergration

Post by rhoward »

Some great questions in here. Unfortunately I can't answer all of them directly (just yet).



1. Yes, we are renaming Zimbra Community to Zimbra Social - I've been calling it Zimbra Social for some time now already. No, we are using the name Zimbra Sync and Share. Zimbra Files is not descriptive enough and we want our product names to be descriptive. Keep in mind that most customers are re-branding our products.



2. With Microsoft's recent announcement to support running .NET on Linux, Mac and Windows for v5 of .NET, we believe there is a future where the entire Zimbra Social product can run on Linux. We are adding support for MariaDB and have been a long time user of Solr.



3. I'm not prepared to answer this directly yet, but it's a good suggestion :)



4. I'm not prepared to answer this directly yet, but it's a good suggestion :)



5. Yes, this is something we are aware of. Zimbra Social is relatively new for our business service provider channel and Zimbra Sync and Share isn't officially available yet.



6. Yes, this is something we want to encourage (and is related to #3), but clearly we're not there yet.
stormpoorun
Posts: 7
Joined: Thu Oct 10, 2013 6:22 pm

Zimbra products - future contributions and intergration

Post by stormpoorun »

Rob Howard wrote:Some great questions in here. Unfortunately I can't answer all of them directly (just yet).
Thanks, and I'm grateful for your detailed response.
Rob Howard wrote:1. Yes, we are renaming Zimbra Community to Zimbra Social - I've been calling it Zimbra Social for some time now already.
Good to have that clarified. :)
Rob Howard wrote: No, we are using the name Zimbra Sync and Share. Zimbra Files is not descriptive enough and we want our product names to be descriptive. Keep in mind that most customers are re-branding our products.
OK. I take your points on the Zimbra Files suggestions. (Though I would still propound that Sync and Share is not ideal. Also, yet other users may be using their own - or even SaaS -installations).
Rob Howard wrote:2. With Microsoft's recent announcement to support running .NET on Linux, Mac and Windows for v5 of .NET, we believe there is a future where the entire Zimbra Social product can run on Linux. We are adding support for MariaDB and have been a long time user of Solr.

Yes, MS opensourcing of .NET is promising. Looking forward to getting Zimbra products together, and perhaps with a single integrated install and set-up process available.
Rob Howard wrote:3. I'm not prepared to answer this directly yet, but it's a good suggestion :)

We'll take hope from this, and for a opensource future for Zimbra Social. :)
Rob Howard wrote:4. I'm not prepared to answer this directly yet, but it's a good suggestion :)
We'll take hope from this too. :)
Of course, there will be many possibilities. And of consequences. (if Sync and Share is a replacement only for Network customers - would Briefcase development continue separately? Or files become a subscription-only feature? If the products are separate, would that detract from the point of integrating the product streams for those providers/users wanting a holistic and integrated experience?)

[quoter="Rob Howard"]5. Yes, this is something we are aware of. Zimbra Social is relatively new for our business service provider channel and Zimbra Sync and Share isn't officially available yet.[/quote]

Understood. In the meantime, I would ask that the product choices be made clearer for some market segments:

a) on the homepage, more effort could be given to address the needs of differing market segments (Personal, Small Business, Nonprofit, Government, Education, Corporate) with links to relevant downloads, resellers, and hosting providers.

b) on the hosting providers page, again the above categories could be produced with hosting providers that are likely to be relevant.

c) on the hosting providers page it should be made clear that at present only Zimbra collaboration is available, as there is currently no way of knowing that and this could be frustrating for a customer seeking a hosted product other than Collaboration - to go through calling 20 providers to find out!
d) on the hosting providers page, when other products come on-stream, the customer should be able to choose from 'Zimbra Sync and Share, Social, Collaboration, All products'.
Rob Howard wrote:6. Yes, this is something we want to encourage (and is related to #3), but clearly we're not there yet.
This would be great, hopefully  it can help us help you with product development and vice versa. On that topic, pm.zimbra.org is updated very infrequently.
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