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Zimbra Collaboration Suite (ZCS) is a groupware product created by Zimbra Inc., located in San Mateo, California. It consists of both client and server components. Two versions of Zimbra are available: a community-supported open-source version, and a commercially supported version ("Zimbra Network") with closed-source components.
The ZCS Web Client is a full-featured collaboration suite that supports email and group calendars using an Ajax web interface that enables tool tips, draggable items, and right-click menus in the UI. Also included are advanced searching capabilities and date relations (i.e. hover over the phrase "tomorrow at 6:00 PM" in an email message and the system will display any appointments at that time). Online document authoring, "Zimlet" mash-ups and a full administration UI are also included. It is written using the Zimbra Ajax Toolkit.
The ZCS Server leverages many existing open source projects such as Postfix, MySQL, OpenLDAP and Lucene. It exposes an SOAP application programming interface to all its functionality and also is an IMAP and POP3 server. The server runs on many flavors of Linux as well as on Mac OS X.
ZCS is compatible with proprietary clients such as Microsoft Outlook, Novell Evolution, Apple Mail, so that mail, contacts, and calendar items can be synchronised from these to the ZCS server. Zimbra also provides native 2-way sync to many mobile devices (Nokia Eseries, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile).
Software License
ZCS Server and Zimbra Ajax Toolkit (the toolkit is available independent of the web client), are both licensed under the terms of the Mozilla Public License (MPL), and accordingly require that modifications made to existing files be given back to the community. ZCS Web Client alone is licensed under the terms of the Zimbra Public License (ZPL) which is derived from the MPL. ZPL adds an appendix to MPL requiring that any products derived from the ZCS Web Client source code display a "Zimbra Inside" logo that links back to the Zimbra website; see the license for details.
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