Zimbra @ Stern

A New Web-Based Messaging & Collaboration Suite

Anand Padmanabhan

At NYU's Leonard N. Stern School of Business, over the past year or so, we have been working on a project intended to offer state-of-the-art web-based messaging and collaboration services that completely meet the needs of Stern students, faculty, and administrators. A review in 2007 of Stern's then-current email and calendar systems indicated that, among the features Stern community members had come to expect and need were a more up-to-date and friendly user interface, native support for mobile devices, and cross-browser compatibility. In addition, many community members were eager to subscribe to and publish calendar and news feeds, and to gain broader access to their mail and calendar through mobile integration.

Selecting Zimbra

The Stern Information Technology department, in conjunction with various members of the Stern community, formed an exploratory committee to investigate new messaging and collaboration services that offered a stable and scalable platform with improved functionalities.
The committee investigated a number of options, and chose Zimbra as Stern's next-generation messaging and collaboration platform. Zimbra offered open standards and open source and provided a modern, innovative messaging and collaboration platform compatible with diverse desktop and application environments. In addition, Zimbra featured a user-friendly interface that supported next-generation user interface technology compatible with all major web browsers. One of our primary objectives was to provide a consistent and full messaging and calendaring experience within all popular web browsers. Zimbra worked well with client applications across the Windows, Macintosh, and Linux platforms. It also offered excellent mobile device support for Windows Mobile, iPhone, and Palm. Best of all, Zimbra could be integrated easily into the existing underlying technology framework, making it not only an economical choice but one that required only minimal modification.

A Two-Phase Implementation of an Efficient, Intuitive Product Suite

Zimbra was launched at Stern in August 2007, and is being implemented in two phases. The first phase focused on providing integrated email and calendar capabilities, increased mail quota, and a redundant architecture. We are now planning the rollout of Phase 2, including enhancements and activation of additional new features. In addition to superior email, messaging, and calendar features, Zimbra offers new features surpassing those of earlier collaboration systems, such as a much-needed 1 GB mail quota, cross-browser compatibility, and RSS subscriptions. Additional features include the ability to interface with Microsoft Outlook, sync with the iPhone and Treo, share iCal calendars, and subscribe to multiple calendars such as the Academic and Public Events calendars.

The enhanced calendar, with its Free/Busy viewing option, simplifies the task of scheduling meetings and other events. Stern community members can view and confirm the availability of others, without having to contact them directly. With the addition of Zimlets (mash-ups), the integrated email and calendaring capabilities enable more effective and efficient management of collaboration tools. That is, a Zimbra user can access email and calendar services, and simultaneously pull information from any internal system, all from one interface. For example, if an email arrives requesting your availability for a specific date, you can move your mouse over the date listed in the email, and your calendar for that day appears in a palette within the email. You can see if you're free at that time and add the appointment to your calendar without ever leaving that email. In that way, you can manage both email and calendar requests from one interface, without having to migrate to or open a new window.

Zimbra also offers advanced Search, Tag, Filtering, and Tracking services, providing a quick and easy tool for navigating through one's email and email attachments. Document collaboration, Instant Messaging, and Tasks/Project Management are other features in the system that will be rolled out shortly.

The Stern community has found the Zimbra messaging and collaboration suite very efficient and intuitive. As with the launching of any new product, there were some challenges, but once installation and implementation were complete, the system proved stable and fully capable of supporting the old and new features now available. Moving forward, Stern hopes to further develop the system's collaborative capabilities through the integration of additional Zimlets and other collaboration services.

Author Biography

Anand Padmanabhan is the Chief Information Officer at the Leonard N. Stern School of Business.

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