Zimbra Collaboration Suite as a worthy replacement for Microsoft Exchange

In recent months, the media actively exaggerates information about the possible closure of the Russian office of Microsoft. It all started with the fact that the corporation stopped direct sales of licenses for its software, reorienting them to retail. Then, in the official digital distribution store, the prices were converted to dollars . Considering that only those companies that have an officially registered legal entity in Russia can carry out settlements in rubles, it can be a question not only of closing the Microsoft office in Russia, but also of a legal entity associated with it, and therefore of the potential impossibility of using the software from Microsoft in the public sector. And although in its official comments, Microsoft promised that it would continue to work in Russia, the corporation for some reason did not specify which legal status it would work in, and what tasks to perform. Considering the political background in which events are unfolding, the current situation has led to uncertainty, and the most prudent IT managers have already begun to consider alternative solutions that can replace Microsoft software products.



One of the key products that should start looking for a replacement in the first place, of course, is MS Exchange. If you use a collaboration and e-mail solution in your company, then you probably know how much in today's business is tied to synchronized calendars, global address lists, online communication, video calling, and so on. The prospect that at one point the legal use of the system of joint work will become impossible, creates a serious threat to business and the normal functioning of a state institution. However, there is good news. Microsoft Exchange can be replaced by Zimbra Collaboration Suite Open-Source Edition - a free open-source solution.
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Today, Zimbra is one of the leading email solutions that can provide not only the functionality of an email server, but also calendar and collaboration. Due to the fact that Zimbra is undemanding to system resources and can be installed on any Linux distribution, it has gained great popularity all over the world. To date, the number of users of the Zimbra Collaboration Suite exceeds 500 million people, many of whom use Zimbra through SaaS providers. Daily, users create hundreds of thousands of events in the calendar, send and receive terabytes of emails, and share files with each other. Zimbra helps its users to save not only money but also time - the only truly valuable and irreplaceable resource.

But if Zimbra Collaboration Suite Open-Source Edition can be reproached with something, it is because it is not suitable for use in real business conditions. All features in demand in this area, for example, a real-time backup system, or a data compression and deduplication system, were carefully transferred by the developer to the commercial version of the product. In this case, not everyone will be satisfied with the high price and a large number of functions of the commercial version of Zimbra, which will not find application in real business conditions.



For those who lack the functionality of the free version of Zimbra, and the opportunities provided by the commercial version seem redundant, the Italian company Zextras has developed the Zextras Suite package of modular extensions, which add only the most necessary functions to Zimbra Open-Source Edition, but at the same time cost much less .

Thanks to Zextras Suite, the Zimbra Collaboration Suite can add an advanced backup system, disaster recovery, support for multi-tenancy, delegation of administrative privileges, text and video chat, support for multi-level storage, as well as a system for archiving and deduplicating data to save disk space. In addition, the Zextras Mobile extension will give you the ability to sync Zimbra with mobile devices, as well as add compatibility with Microsoft Outlook, which will be extremely useful for those who migrate to Zimbra with Exchange. Such compatibility will allow e-mail users to continue using the familiar program even after the migration is completed, which means that the transition process itself will become more seamless and will require less time for training the company's employees.

The migration process from MS Exchange to Zimbra is quite simple. For these purposes, the ZCS Migration Wizard utility was specially developed. It can transfer calendar data, mailboxes, and contact lists to Zimbra. Detailed instructions on its use can be found in one of our previous articles . In any case, we strongly recommend that you do not wait for the force majeure and download the free Zimbra Collaboration Suite Open-Source Edition , as well as the trial version of Zextras Suite right now and personally check whether this solution is suitable for your business. As Lewis Carroll wrote, “you have to run as fast just to stay in the same place,” and today this phrase can be safely applied to the sphere of Russian IT.