Ubuntu Offers Yahoo! Zimbra Desktop

August 7, 2008

Canonical, sponsors of Ubuntu, the fastest growing Linux distribution, will give users direct access to Yahoo! Zimbra Desktop, which provides a centralized hub to manage multiple e-mail accounts and calendars online and offline, through the Ubuntu Partner Repository. Zimbra, a Yahoo! company.

“Since we first announced general availability of Zimbra for Ubuntu last year, we have seen incredible adoption within the Ubuntu community,” said Andy Pflaum, senior director of business management, Zimbra Business Unit, Yahoo!. “We are eager to offer our world-class collaboration experience, Yahoo! Zimbra Desktop, to the vibrant community of Ubuntu users worldwide.”

The inclusion of Yahoo! Zimbra Desktop in the Ubuntu Partner Repository provides Ubuntu users with collaboration technology that is built natively for the Linux platform. With Yahoo! Zimbra Desktop, Ubuntu users will have access to Yahoo! Mail, Gmail, AOL Mail and any IMAP or POP enabled e-mail account, such as work, personal and school accounts, from the same place, even when they are not connected to the Internet. Additionally, Yahoo! Zimbra Desktop allows people to use the iCal standard to take their calendar offline.

Yahoo! Zimbra Desktop provides the same sleek collaboration experience as the Zimbra Web client version including advanced calendaring, self-organizing mailboxes, powerful search, tagging, and mash-ups with Web services including Flickr, Yahoo! Maps and Amazon. In addition, Yahoo! Zimbra Desktop offers a number of features designed to help users stay organized, such as document creation, spreadsheets, task management and document storage, giving users a robust alternative to other desktop applications.

"The addition of Yahoo! Zimbra Desktop to our Partner Repository gives millions of Ubuntu users instant access to best-in-class messaging and collaboration,” said Malcolm Yates, global ISV partner manager at Canonical. "As we broaden the user base of Ubuntu, our users’ needs are becoming more diverse and more complex. Yahoo! Zimbra Desktop is just the type of productivity tool they need, and we look forward to seeing adoption and deployment rates increase for this excellent tool within the Ubuntu community."

Yahoo! Zimbra Desktop Beta Version 3 is available for free download at Zimbra.com/desktop. Anyone with access to Zimbra Collaboration Suite (ZCS), Yahoo! Mail, Gmail, AOL Mail, or an IMAP/POP enabled server can use Zimbra Desktop.

Zimbra’s Web client and server, the Zimbra Collaboration Suite 5.0 Open Source Edition is free. The commercially supported ZCS 5.0 Network Edition is available for a 60-day free trial on the Zimbra website. Zimbra's Hosted Demo is available for an immediate test drive of ZCS.

ZCS Network Edition includes product support as well as software subscriptions to new releases, updates and patches. ZCS is available on-premise or as a hosted service and is available at a significant educational or non-profit discount.