The Ajax client talks to the local server in a way not much different from the online Ajax client to a real ZCS server. Here is a component diagram of Zimbra Desktop.Īt the core of Zimbra Desktop there lies the “micro edition” of the ZCS Server.
#Zimbra desktop google apps code
Moreover, the high level of code overlap between the two products not only makes development cheaper but also brings innovation to market faster, because a new feature added to one is automatically available in the other in most cases. As a matter of fact many ZCS users are also Zimbra Desktop users, often switching between the two as they move between computers. The third point about lower user learning cost is due to the fact that the Zimbra Desktop UI is virtually identical to that of the ZCS Ajax web client, so a user familiar with the ZCS Ajax UI doesn’t have to learn a new UI when running Zimbra Desktop. But the equivalent is true in the case of ZCS and Zimbra Desktop. Using an analogy, if I were to claim that Exchange Server and Outlook client share more than 95% of the code between them, few people would believe me. In terms of their designated roles, the two products can’t be more different. So what is the desktop application, Zimbra Desktop? In short, Zimbra Desktop is a special build of ZCS that installs the ZCS Server and the Ajax client on the same user computer, collapsing the client and server tiers into one. The Zimbra Collaboration Suite (ZCS) has support for many clients, including a state-of-the-art Ajax Web client. It is a carrier grade email collaboration server running at many Fortune 500 companies, universities and large Internet Service Providers. The enterprise server in this case is Zimbra Collaboration Suite Server.
We are developing two products, an enterprise server product and a desktop application, in lockstep in the same code base.
However what makes Zimbra Desktop a unique case is the engineering approach. Of course Mozilla XUL based desktop applications like Thunderbird and Songbird have been around even longer. Both Microsoft and Adobe have been pushing for their brand of RIA (Rich Internet Application) platforms, namely Sliverlight and AIR, and I have seen quite a few desktop products built on one or the other. Using technology originally designed for the Web in desktop application development is not anything new, let alone unique. However for anyone who’s curious enough to take a peek under the hood, she will find Web oriented technology at every turn. Even though it’s designed to aggregate mail, calendar and address book data from many Web services such as Yahoo! Mail and Gmail, it runs and interacts with user independent of any particular Web service. It installs and runs on a user’s computer. Zimbra Desktop behaves like a classic desktop application.
I’d like to use this occasion to reflect back at an interesting approach that the Zimbra engineering team took in developing this product.
#Zimbra desktop google apps full
With its 1.0 GA announcement this week, Zimbra Desktop is officially launched as an open source, full featured desktop mail client. By JJ Zhuang on Apin Open Source, Zimbra Desktop
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