One of the trends that have been established recently is the rejection of the office in its usual sense. The development of mobile and home broadband services allowed enterprises to transfer some workers to the remote work format and due to this, not only increase their efficiency and job satisfaction, but also optimize a number of costs associated with finding an employee in a physical office. However, such a move led to the emergence of new challenges for business, because along with the benefits, there was a need to ensure prompt interaction of the employee working from home with colleagues.
Someone solves this issue with the help of various instant messengers and video conferencing services. Although this approach is convenient and inexpensive, it creates a lot of risks to the continuity of business processes and information security of the enterprise, because the suspension of the work of third-party services can permanently paralyze the enterprise. The business need to control electronic platforms for interaction between employees has led to the creation of specialized software solutions - collaboration platforms.
One of the best representatives of such solutions is the Zimbra Collaboration Suite. Against the background of other collaboration platforms, it is highlighted by the open source code, scalability, extensibility, and free solution. Today, Zimbra Open Source Edition boasts an email server with built-in anti-virus and anti-spam solutions, advanced calendar, address book, file sharing system between users and many other functions necessary for collaboration.
In addition, the functionality of Zimbra can be expanded with the help of Zimlets - software modules that add certain functions to Zimbra. Among them are, for example, Undo Send Zimlet. It allows users to cancel sending emails within 10 seconds after clicking the “Send” button. A very useful feature, isn't it? You can also find zimlets for integrating Zimbra with other information systems and even for reading RSS feeds directly in the Zimbra user interface.
In other words, Zimbra is a reliable, free, easy-to-deploy and perfectly working solution, which, moreover, allows businesses to completely control the site where employees interact.
Despite this, there are still a few flaws in the Zimbra Open Source Edition. For example, this solution cannot integrate with Microsoft products such as Exchange, AD, and Outlook. In addition, it does not use the most optimal backup and recovery systems for various failures. This means that Zimbra OSE pauses every night in order to make a backup and then starts working again, and the deployment of the backup to the server is done manually. All this increases the time it takes to put Zimbra into operation with a possible emergency and, accordingly, makes the use of Zimbra OSE in large enterprises quite risky. In order to reduce business risks and achieve maximum time savings, the Italian company Zextras has developed a number of add-ons for Zimbra called Zextras Suite.
Unlike Zimbra Open-Source Edition, Zextras Suite requires licensing, however, it is thanks to Zextras Suite that Zimbra has a number of things necessary to ensure business continuity, including a real-time backup and recovery system. Unlike the solution used in Zimbra OSE, this system does not require a suspension of work to make a backup copy, and the deployment takes place in just a few clicks, which significantly reduces downtime during various emergencies from which even the largest enterprises are not insured. The backup system uses unique deduplication algorithms, thanks to which it is possible to achieve a significant reduction in backup disk space, and therefore a
good saving . In addition, Zimbra has a convenient corporate chat, the ability to synchronize with mobile devices and advanced Zimbra administration tools. Also, with the help of Zimbra with Zextras Suite installed, you can automate a number of routine processes and even organize workflow within the company.
Identifying the need to purchase Zextras Suite for your enterprise is quite simple. It is enough just to assess the criticality of the Zimbra Collaboration Suite in the company's infrastructure and estimate the cost of an hour of server downtime with this platform. If its cost to the enterprise is higher than the cost of the license, then you should definitely improve your Zimbra OSE with the help of Zextras Suite.
Look at the Zextras Suite in can anyone. To do this, you need to download or get a trial version of the product using the wget command from Zextras website, unpack it and install it on your server with Zimbra. This can be done from the command line.
$ wget www.zextras.com/download/zextras_suite-latest.tgz
$ tar xfz zextras_suite-latest.tgz
$ ls
$ cd zextras_suite-XXX
$ ./install.sh -h
$ ./install.sh all
The trial version of Zextras suite has no restrictions on functionality. You can use it for a month, after which you will need to purchase a license. All information on their value is
on the website of the Zextas company .