Synacor's CEO on Synacor, CloudID and Zimbra

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Klug
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Synacor's CEO on Synacor, CloudID and Zimbra

Post by Klug »

Hi all.

I have not seen it anywhere on the forum (or Zimbra's website), there's a podcast interview of Synacor's CEO from last month (mid-december).
It's available here, with a written transcript too: https://www.lightreading.com/videomedia ... -id/782430

I'm happy to learn that "a lot of bugs that had kind of been ignored for a while" were fixed in 2022 ("tech debt").
Also that there's now a roadmap (as previous one "was not clear").

However, Zimbra's future is not clear to me.
I'm not sure what will happen, Synacor split into 2 or 3 companies, Zimbra sold to someone else (Oracle?) or linked to another product.
CEO's language is not my mother tongue, so I'd be glad to have any additional explanations on what was said.
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gabrieles
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Re: Synacor's CEO on Synacor, CloudID and Zimbra

Post by gabrieles »

- there was some tech debt built up
- there was some roadmap thath wasn't clear
- there was a lot of bugs that have been ignored
- We really wanted to clean all up, we've done a great job doing that in 2022

It's not my mothertongue too. I hope that I've misunderstood something...
Last edited by gabrieles on Wed Oct 11, 2023 8:51 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Synacor's CEO on Synacor, CloudID and Zimbra

Post by bulletxt »

Thanks so much for sharing this.

We can say this is "first" announce ever from synacor about zimbra, right ? It seems in 2023 Zimbra will become "a company" https://drive.google.com/file/d/14LpBP7 ... sp=sharing . Not sure what that means. What is for sure is that there are a lot of companies, governments , military ecc that NEED Zimbra as open source.

Not sure, maybe Oracle will come in and buy Zimbra product so they can compete against Microsoft/Google ?
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Re: Synacor's CEO on Synacor, CloudID and Zimbra

Post by halfgaar »

I'm not so keen on Oracle entering the picture. There's plenty to read on the internet about Oracle's licensing (audits) and legal tactics.

Like the VirtualBox extension pack license:
Upon 45 days written notice, Oracle may audit your use of the Product to confirm that you are in compliance with the terms of this Agreement. You agree to cooperate with Oracle’s audit and provide reasonable assistance and access to information.
And they're doing it, even to paying customers.

In the transcript of the interview, Oracle is only mentioned once:
I think with Zimbra the big changes are, to the extent that we host any email services, we have a really strong partnership with Oracle that we've developed and we're running on OCI. But then really what we're finding is there's tailwinds in that business. You know, that business for us is very international. And there is more and more companies that really want to have control over their data, they want total sovereignty. They want total control, they want options, they want open source, and their options are few -- they can't really deal with a the Googles these days. And even with Microsoft, you know, they're sunsetting Exchange.
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Re: Synacor's CEO on Synacor, CloudID and Zimbra

Post by mzionts »

Hi everyone,

I want to thank everyone that posted their thoughts on my recent podcast and article in Light Reading.

The key takeaway I would like people to have is that we are FOCUSED and DEDICATED to making Zimbra an excellent product for our community. By selling off a product line in 2021 and then splitting our product teams in 2022 between Zimbra and Cloud ID, we have dedicated sales, marketing, product management, and engineering for each product line.

While eventually, we expect to sell these businesses in a few years, our near-term priorities are all around the product roadmaps. I say we will eventually sell these businesses because Synacor was taken private and acquired by a private equity firm in 2021. These owners typically hold ownership for around five years. I fully expect that Zimbra will become either a standalone company down the road, potentially owned by a different private equity firm, or, possibly, become part of a larger company. In either case, I believe that we have an incredible community and that Zimbra will continue to exist and be supported going forward. In other words, we are in this for the long haul and fully committed.

Finally, my comments about Oracle relate to how we partner with Oracle Cloud (OCI) to deliver to our service provider partners in the USA. We are exploring how we can set up OCI and Zimbra in other geographic markets so that our partners and customers can choose to leverage our investments with OCI as another service delivery option. A cornerstone of our strategy is to provide choice, so whether it is on-prem, hybrid cloud, private cloud, or OCI, we want to offer options that address our partners' and customers' unique requirements.

Best regards,
Marc (Synacor's CEO)
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Re: Synacor's CEO on Synacor, CloudID and Zimbra

Post by halfgaar »

Thanks for your response. Let me just add that I've been a happy Zimbra admin+user for about 10 years now. Sometimes it feels like an uphill battle wanting to host (on-premise) apps (vs cloud offerings), so I hope to be able to continue to rely on Zimbra for years to come.
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Re: Synacor's CEO on Synacor, CloudID and Zimbra

Post by bulletxt »

mzionts wrote:I believe that we have an incredible community and that Zimbra will continue to exist and be supported going forward
Hi Marc
first of all thanks for posting, this wasn't expected!

Regarding your statement, Zimbra community will exist as long as you continue supporting it. I'm not sure what happened with Zimbra 9 and its releasing model being only network edition. Community still exists as 8.8.15 is "alive" till 31/12/2023, but after that we only see a "black hole".

If Synacor does not announce anything about this in following months, community will slowly "die" and move towards other solutions. You are actually giving the opportunity to some competitors to get in the market... is this what you really want from your roadmap?

Sure to be updated, I wish you the best!
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Re: Synacor's CEO on Synacor, CloudID and Zimbra

Post by phoenix »

Hi Marc

It was interesting and a pleasure to read your Podcast and the commitment to the Community and OSS version of ZCS. After being here for a 'few' years I'll continue to look forward to the future with the best mail server product on the market and the liveliest community. Many thanks for your post and the update. :)
Regards

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Re: Synacor's CEO on Synacor, CloudID and Zimbra

Post by buruguduy »

Hi,

Thanks. Is there anything down the road? Any news about Zimbra 10 or anything newer for those who uses OSE?

Thanks!
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