(SYS-CON Media) - Zimbra, pioneer in open source, next-generation collaboration and messaging software, announced the launch of Zimbra Collaboration Suite (ZCS) 4.5. Zimbra added more than two million paid mailboxes in the last quarter alone, and the company now has more than six million paid mailboxes globally, serving 1,300 customers in onsite deployments and its hosted partner program. Additionally, there are millions more users and thousands more organizations that have implemented the Zimbra Open Source Edition. More than 6,300 developers and administrators are now active members of the Zimbra community, and Zimbra's open source software has been downloaded hundreds of thousands of times.

"We are excited to see broad interest in Zimbra from ISPs to small businesses, universities, enterprises and business hosting providers," said Satish Dharmaraj, CEO at Zimbra. "The 4.5 release is dedicated to providing more innovation and better security and controls to the administrators."

Zimbra added a host of new technology and channel partners in Q4 2006, including leading value-added resellers (VARs) and hosting service providers (HSPs) such as BEK Communications and Uniserve Communications Corp (Canada). More than 60% of Zimbra's customers are now being driven through VARs and HSPs, and Zimbra is committed to partnering with channel partners around the world.

"Zimbra's consistent focus on providing a rich mix of innovative technology and customer-focused design gives us great tools to help us deliver exceptional products that fire the imagination and give tremendous value," said Michael Fergusson, Chief Products and Innovation Officer, Uniserve Communications Corp. "I believe with ZCS 4.5, Zimbra has established a winning combination of administrative features, and end-user functionality."

ZCS 4.5 features an improved AJAX Administrative Interface plus full scripting tools, and support for standards-based APIs (IMAP / POP / iCal / CalDAV / RSS / ATOM) which enable seamless compatibility with Microsoft Outlook and Apple. Zimbra 4.5 also expands the support of Zimbra Mobile for push mobile without the need for third party software or additional servers for most devices. As part of 4.5, Zimbra will provide support for the growing Ubuntu and Mandriva Linux distributions.

"After years of using Exchange, our users demanded a more advanced collaboration environment than Microsoft could provide," said Scott Bisker, Corporate Director of Information Technology, Harvard Custom Manufacturing. "Zimbra preserves Outlook connectivity for users that need it, delivers a superior AJAX interface for Web use, and drives our TCO down considerably."

Zimbra Collaboration Suite (ZCS) 4.5 is a modern, innovative messaging and collaboration application. AJAX-based collaboration is at the heart of ZCS 4.5. Its powerful Web client integrates email, contacts, shared calendar, VoIP, and online document authoring and sharing. Zimbra is the leading open source collaboration suite for enterprise, service provider, academic, and government environments; offering administrators and their end-users unmatched benefits.

ZCS 4.5 Key Features:
-- Support for POP account aggregation and multiple user identities
-- Zimbra Basic client (HTML) for users on low-bandwidth connections
-- Native support for push to mobile devices
-- Support for Ubuntu and Mandriva Linux distributions

In addition, ZCS 4.5 provides innovation for administrators and service providers:
-- An expanded administrative interface for managing Zimlets, providing unique integration of ZCS 4.5 with third party information systems and content as well as creating "mash-up" user interfaces within the Zimbra suite itself
-- Expanded administration for online backups
-- Advanced controls for delegated administrators to set quotas, the number of accounts per domain and other parameters
-- Enhanced security for service providers and large deployments (COS-based strong password requirement, account locked after 'n' failed attempts)
-- Service provider tools for searching for domains and users
-- User mailbox archiving for compliance (beta)

ZCS 4.5 reflects innovation driven by the Zimbra community, delivering features that received the most votes and support requests from users and administrators:

-- Advanced monitoring of spam and virus processes
-- Personalized distribution lists or contact groups
-- Reading pane on/off preference choice
-- Personalized viewing through user-defined default font, size, and color preferences
-- Extensible directory where customers can store their own information
-- Zimbra Toaster brings message alerts to the desktop
-- Tasks support in Microsoft Outlook
-- Migration tools for Novell GroupWise and Lotus Domino installs