DataSync Business News

In an effort to keep you updated on our progress on DataSync Suite, I decided to sit down with our engineers and ask a few probing questions. We’re excited about our progress with the package thus far, and have a strong commitment of keeping you up to date on what we’re up to. We have an extremely dynamic group of engineers who are making fast progress on our software package.

Q: What aspect of DataSync Suite are you working on right now?
A: Right now we’re working on the ability to archive emails to SugarCRM from Zimbra. This is just the first step in reproducing many of the features of the Outlook and Thunderbird plugins but for Zimbra.

Q: What technologies will you use use for data synchronization?
A: Data synchronization will be handled by what we’ve dubbed the “Integration Bus”. The “Integration Bus”, in short, will listen for changes to certain types of data in applications. When a change occurs in a particular application the Bus will distribute those changes to all other applications which rely on the same type of data.

Q: What are some of the upcoming features to expect?
A: The next major feature that we’ll be releasing is, of course, the email archiving. The communities surrounding Zimbra and SugarCRM have been looking for a way to keep their addressbook (contacts) and their calendars synchronized. After the email archiving our focus will be on just that, giving users a way to keep their calendars and contacts in sync between SugarCRM and Zimbra. Of course the DataSync Suite won’t be limited to just those two applications but will provide the means to allow other applications to be added to the mix easily.

Q: What applications will you be supporting in the future?
A: The next application we will be adding support for is Alfresco. Alfresco is an innovative open source content management system which provides digital management for documents, records, and website content. Following Alfresco will be Magento, an open source ecommerce solution.

Q: How do you handle feature requests?
A: Feature requests and bug reports can be submitted through our website feature request form.

Q: When are the next minor and major releases of the software?
A: The next release will be 0.5.0. This release will include the new email archiving functionality, an improved dashboard that takes up less screen real estate, and will introduce a new application server.

Q: When do you expect a 1.0 release?
A:  We’re looking to release version 1.0 around the end of the year.

If you have questions or comments, please post on our forums or contact us directly.

This came off the wires over the weekend. It looks like Balmer and the people at Microsoft have abandoned their bid for Yahoo. We think this is great news for Zimbra, one of our finest software tools. Ballmer threatened an ugly proxy fight for Yahoo, but it now seems that was mostly an intimidation attempt. Microsoft’s exit from this deal may also be related to the fact that earnings fell this quarter for Microsoft, making the stock portion of the deal more expensive.

Overall this is great news for the advertising and open source world. Consolidating search engines won’t be good for the common internet user, choice is always a good thing. Because Zimbra was right in the middle of this deal, it’s also good for this high-growth entity. Zimbra competes with Microsoft Exchange, and has done extremely well at doing so. DataSync has moved countless users from Exchange over to Zimbra with solid results. We think that Yahoo has a strong position to win against the software giant, and we look forward to watching from a front row seat.

Go Yahoo!

Today our recent Blackberry/Zimbra integration got picked up on CNET.com. We’re one of the first companies to offer Zimbra/BES integration, and the service is starting to get traction. Keep in mind that support is still in beta mode, however it’s a great solution that works well. We have many users already on the system with great results.

There’s a few quirks to work out yet, but Zimbra and RIM (Research in Motion – the company behind BlackBerry) are doing a great job on making the changes necessary to bring this integration into full production, hopefully in the near future.

If you’re interested in using your BlackBerry with Zimbra, check out our website for more details.

We’re finally ready to commit to a timeline for our first landmark feature for DataSync Suite: Zimbra email archiving to SugarCRM. You’ve been asking for it, we’re going to deliver. It’ll be open source and up for grabs in a couple months.

We’ve been focused on developing the single sign-on and account management portions of DataSync Suite. Now that we’ve made some progress there, we’re going to focus on a cool new feature over the next few weeks: developing a plugin that allows users to archive their email in Zimbra to SugarCRM.

We’ve already seen this done in desktop clients such as Thunderbird and Outlook, but no one has done it in the web interface of Zimbra. We’re doing this to remove the need for a desktop client to move information between SugarCRM and Zimbra.

In the future we’re also going to add contact, task, and calender syncing to the plugin. We’ll probably take a break and work on some other aspects of DataSync Suite (such as the integration bus) before we tackle that. However if there’s a group out in the community who would like to help us out, that would be much appreciated

DataSync is excited to launch full BlackBerry BES (BlackBerry Enterprise Server) support for Zimbra and SugarCRM. We’ve been in testing for a long time (thanks to all you beta testers!) and have confidence in our backend systems. BlackBerry support is a key part of our ongoing strategy to mobilize our applications, and Zimbra and SugarCRM are the first apps to jump on this trend.

Zimbra is currently in “beta” BlackBerry support mode, however we have had a very solid response over the past 30 days in our test environment. We’ve decided to offer this service commercially because of the overall stability of the system. Even though it isn’t 100% solid yet, it’s a massive improvement over NotifyLink’s software (which regularly angered DataSync and our users). So in light of the move forward, we’ve decided to pull support for Notify and move our users exclusively to BES.

On the SugarCRM front, we now have numerous options for managing CRM on your BlackBerry. If you’re in a high-speed mobile network, you’ll really appreciate the funcionality. If you’re still on 1x or a slower mobile network, the connectivity will be slow. We don’t have EVDO here just yet, but I still take advantage of the ability to look up contacts, log cases, and track accounts on my BlackBerry. If you’re interested in mobile SugarCRM options contact us and we’ll give you the scoop on our experiences.

Mobile devices are a growing part of our client’s lives. Managing email, calendars, contact lists are becoming a regular part of business. We’re committed to doing our best to provide our clients with the latest mobile technology to set their workforce free.

In the last few years, Zimbra has grown by leaps and bounds in competing with Outlook and Exchange in the corporate email world. Most technical analysts agree that Zimbra has a much better and more server management tools, is much more efficient than exchange, and is more reliable than exchange, however thus far Zimbra has been primarily been an email-server solution, and much less of an email client. It’s has a very useable AJAX web client, but until recently, there was no desktop software that Zimbra created to compete directly with Outlook. Zimbra recently launched a beta of their new desktop client, dubbed Zimbra Desktop, and we’re impressed.

The primary benefit in using Zimbra desktop as opposed to the web client is that you can use it when you’re offline. You might be on the road, have your laptop with you, and want to send an email or save an appointment for later, but you can’t since there’s no internet connection. You can now do that with Zimbra Desktop. You can make any changes you want with Zimbra’s Desktop Client, and then whenever you have an internet connection again, it’ll sync your changes up to the server.

Zimbra Desktop features full email support as you get in Outlook. It also features a fast and indexed search tool. You can also access your calendar and contacts offline. An interesting feature is that you can manage Gmail, Yahoo Mail, IMAP, and POP email accounts in addition to your Zimbra email accounts. This means that you can view all of your Gmail offline, make changes as you’d like, and then when you connect to the internet, any changes you make to the account will by synced.

The client is written in Java and is available on Windows, Mac, or Linux. So far, it’s just a beta, but it’s got a lot of potential. As the development process continues and Zimbra Desktop matures, Outlook is sure to have a fierce competitor.

With the proliferation of Google Apps, Meebo, email web clients and other web applications, it’s very clear that we are moving away from a traditional client-server model of desktop software and moving towards server-side web-applications which we can access using nothing more than our standard web browsers. When it comes to web based email clients which are being increasingly adopted by businesses and universities, there are two primary competitors when it comes business & corporate email solutions, and they are Zimbra (OSS) and Microsoft’s Outlook web client. Which offers an overall better user experience & has technically superior functionality? Let’s find out.

Customization – Outlook’s web client only allows 4-5 different color schemes developed by Microsoft. Zimbra offers close to 10 different themes which each significantly change the look and feel of the client. In addition, developers can create their own Zimbra themes whereas Outlook’s themes are limited to what Microsoft creates.

Address Book, Contacts, & Tasks – Outlook & Zimbra both offer very good address book, contact, and task functionality. These are fairly mature pieces of software and we won’t likely see much change in the near future between either of the clients.

Document Management – Outlook has no support for document management. Zimbra has what they call a “Briefcase” which will allow you to upload and store files in your email server, which can come in really handy when you don’t have a flash drive. It also makes it so you don’t have to email files to yourself.

Instant Messaging – Outlook has no support for instant messaging and Microsoft instead suggests that their customers rely on the Windows Live Messenger service that they offer, but this requires a desktop client, which not everyone wants. For corporate and educational environments, Zimbra offers a very functional instant messaging client. You can add anyone else in your network and chat with them when they have their email clients open, so it’s a great solution for business environments.

External Mail Delivery – Outlook’s desktop client allows you to add multiple POP3 and IMAP email accounts from various servers, but Outlook’s web client is missing this functionality all together. Zimbra’s web client allows you to add as many POP3 and IMAP accounts as your hearts desire.

Preferences – Zimbra has 9 different tabs of options & customizations that you can modify to your heart’s desire, whereas outlook only has one page and very meager settings and customizations that users can play with.

So where do we stand? Zimbra is clearly technically superior because it has all sorts of functionality that Microsoft’s Outlook web client is missing. It also provides a much better user experience because it’s versatile and can be customized to whatever the user’s heart desires.

We are proud to announce the production launch of Zimbra 5.0 Network Edition on all hosted environments (shared, virtual, dedicated). Zimbra has done a tremendous job on this landmark release, most notably the head-on feature competition with Microsoft Exchange. Zimbra now has a much more robust feature set at an extremely competitive price. Zimbra 5.0 adds support for Outlook 2007, iPhone, and other desktop and mobile clients. Feature upgrades include task support, instant messaging, and the landmark “Briefcase” file management solution.

Zimbra is now a viable option for a variety of industry verticals, including higher education (universities, tech schools), technology companies, media/marketing firms, financial services, and medical services. DataSync has experience implementing Zimbra in all these industries, and is looking to ramp up services in each vertical in the future.

If you are interested in DataSync’s Zimbra hosting and implementation services, check out their corporate website at http://discoverefficiency.com.

For a few years now, the Zimbra Collaboration Suite and SugarCRM haven’t talked. We all wish they would. It’s a frustrating problem, because both applications have very strong points, but very different uses. Zimbra excels at group collaboration and messaging, while Sugar is a full fledged CRM application. The problem is syncing email, calendars, and contacts has been non-existent.

That’s about to change. DataSync is sponsoring the “Zimgar” project, which aims to build an open source tool that plugs both applications into each other. No more manual or Outlook-based tri-directional syncing. Right now we’re still in the planning stages of this project, but hope to start development very soon.

If you have ideas or thoughts email me. I’d be more than happy to go over our strategy and get your input.

Onward!

-Mike