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    Zimbras Open-Source Shared Calendar Supports RSS

    By
    Lisa Vaas
    -
    November 15, 2005
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      Zimbra Inc. on Tuesday launched what it claims is the first open-source group scheduling calendar—and with it comes the first publicly available release of its Network Edition, targeted at enterprises.

      In addition, the companys self-named collaboration suite now supports RSS and Atom feeds, online backup and recovery, hierarchical storage management and clustering for high availability.

      The startup came out of stealth mode when it launched its Zimbra Collaboration Suite at Web 2.0 in September.

      The San Mateo, Calif., companys suite is a client/server system for e-mail, contacts and group calendaring.

      /zimages/1/28571.gifClick here to read about how eBay sellers will use RSS to advertise their goods.

      The new calendar capability in Zimbras Beta 2 version includes group scheduling with free/busy indication; the ability to import external calendars in .ics format; a multi-calendar view that allows users to view all calendars to which they have access and to overlay each calendar in different colors; delegated access, such as for executive administrators; time zones and recurrences; and graphical layout that includes drag-and-drop capability.

      “You can subscribe to calendar data off the Internet: Your favorite sports teams or bands or rock venues are all available,” Zimbra President and Chief Technology Officer Scott Dietzen said. “You can share calendar data with friends … as well as subscribe [to date feeds].”

      As far as enterprise use goes, the group scheduling capabilities of ZCS Beta 2 mean that marketing or engineering groups can publish their data on an intranet. That includes, for example, attachments in calendar entries, thus making it what Dietzen called a “full-on collaboration vehicle.”

      The Zimbra client is built on AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) and communicates with the Zimbra server via XML and SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol). It runs on Windows, Linux and Mac desktops in the Firefox and Internet Explorer Web browsers.

      ZCS Beta 2 includes updated support for AJAX mashups. Mashups, a core component of Web 2.0, are the combination of multiple Web services into a single application with the use of the services APIs to bind them together.

      Examples include Housing Maps, a mashup that combines Google Maps with Craigslist.com real estate listings.

      According to Dietzen, Zimbra has pioneered the use of mashups inside of e-mail. An example is the ability to mouse over a date within an e-mail and be presented with the opportunity to access the collaboration suites calendar function.

      The introduction of RSS and Atom feeds makes ZCS Beta 2 bidirectional, Dietzen said, as it allows users to not only subscribe to feeds but also to publish their mailbox contents via RSS. Thus, users can share calendar, contact or mail folders via RSS feeds, either whole or in part.

      Microsoft Corp.s acquisition of Groove Networks has given rise to speculation that the company plans to leverage Web services within Exchange in a similar fashion. But so far, much of the work theyve done has been of a proprietary nature, Dietzen said.

      “…With technologies like RSS, Atom, wiki, iCalendar, interoperable IM, voice over IP, XML, Web services, etc., the Web is growing into a collaboration platform,” he said. “To date, at least, I would argue that Microsoft has been viewing collaboration as more of a proprietary top-down effort than embracing this grass-roots movement.”

      Besides distinguishing itself from proprietary technologies such as Microsofts Exchange, Zimbra distinguishes itself from other open-source collaboration tools such as Hula (a Novell-based project) and Open-Xchange (a European effort that recently moved its headquarters to the United States) with the amount of native support for features that normally require third-party support.

      For example, Zimbra natively supports archiving, anti-spam and anti-virus features, cross-mailbox search (important for discovery related to compliance efforts), and replication across WANs for fast disaster recovery.

      ZCS Beta 2 also includes a dashboard for its anti-spam and anti-virus services; advanced message tracing and troubleshooting capabilities; and an AJAX admin client to edit and create new e-mail alias and distribution lists.

      /zimages/1/28571.gifMozilla overhauls Thunderbirds calendar. Read details here.

      As far as the now-public Network Beta Edition goes, new features include online back-up and smart recovery utilities that enable administrators to back up or recover a single mailbox or group of mailboxes without shutting down the mail server; hierarchical storage management that allows administrators to designate messages to varying grades of storage; the ability to host and manage multiple domains on a single node; the power to search attachments and to view attachments in HTML, thus eliminating the need for all employees to have licensed office applications; and server clustering that allows for automated failover in the event of server crash.

      A 60-day trial version of network Beta 2 Edition and the updated Open Source Beta 2 Edition of ZCS are available for free download at Zimbras site.

      /zimages/1/28571.gifCheck out eWEEK.coms for more on IM and other collaboration technologies.

      Lisa Vaas
      Lisa Vaas is News Editor/Operations for eWEEK.com and also serves as editor of the Database topic center. Since 1995, she has also been a Webcast news show anchorperson and a reporter covering the IT industry. She has focused on customer relationship management technology, IT salaries and careers, effects of the H1-B visa on the technology workforce, wireless technology, security, and, most recently, databases and the technologies that touch upon them. Her articles have appeared in eWEEK's print edition, on eWEEK.com, and in the startup IT magazine PC Connection. Prior to becoming a journalist, Vaas experienced an array of eye-opening careers, including driving a cab in Boston, photographing cranky babies in shopping malls, selling cameras, typography and computer training. She stopped a hair short of finishing an M.A. in English at the University of Massachusetts in Boston. She earned a B.S. in Communications from Emerson College. She runs two open-mic reading series in Boston and currently keeps bees in her home in Mashpee, Mass.
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