Zimbra is both a company and the software made by the company.
Founded on Christmas of 2003 and having raised more than $30M and
reached self-sustainability in only a few years, Zimbra is a software
manufacturer based in San Mateo, California. Purchased by Yahoo!
in September of 2007, and as of August 2007 supporting more than 8
million paid mailboxes not including their summer 2007 deal for
Comcast's MM customers, Zimbra's primary product is the Zimbra
Collaboration Suite (ZCS), a server-based groupware product that
started by providing web-based enterprise e-mail, calendaring, and
contact sharing.
As of Zimbra 5, released Dec 31, 2007, offline and online ZCS
delivers document sharing/versioning, file sharing, secure auditable
chat, task lists, and SOX/HIPPA-compliant
archiving. ZCS' primary online (SaaS) competitor is Google Apps, and
off-line competitors are Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes,
differentiating itself by delivering an innovative, secure, rich
experience through the web first, data portability, open
customization/integration, and also providing multi-platform desktop
and PDA synchronization to iPhone, Blackberry, Windows Mobile and Palm
OS devices.
The Zimbra web experience is the same across Windows, Mac and Linux
through your favorite web browser, and also synchronizes with popular
desktop clients including Outlook, Mail.app, iCal, AddressBook,
Evolution (open source) and Thunderbird. The Zimbra server software runs on Red Hat
Linux, Mac OS, and Linux variants. Zimlets
are open-source based Zimbra plug-ins that extend Zimbra's capabilities
by integrating third-party applications, services and data sources.