Zimbra is a software collaboratif waiter (or Groupware) which makes it possible its users to store, organize and share appointment, contacts, email, bonds, documents and more.

Characteristic: Zimbra is developed on a " mode; Web service". All the interface AJAX is charged with the first connection, then the interactions and addition/modifications of information are sent to the waiter by the protocol SOAP.

Its interface AJAX makes it possible to have an interface authorizing to slip it/deposit, the click-right, the infos-bubbles, the use of short cuts keyboards, etc making it very simple to use. The waiter is accessible via any navigator modern Web and of many heavy customers such as Mozilla Thunderbird and Outlook Express only as regards the directory (via LDAP) or the emails (via POP3 or IMAP).

The whole of the functions of Zimbra is usable via a Navigateur Web or Microsoft Outlook. In its paying version (and owner), Zimbra is also synchronized (in direct mode by the network or through the complementary tools such ActiveSync) with the majority of PDAs: PocketPC and Windows Mobile (PDA and SmartPhones), Palm, Symbian for the mobile phones, ISync (MacOS), and Blackberry (via a complementary software).

ZimbraTk is a toolkit of development of application AJAX, allowing the development of Web applications supporting to slip it/deposit, the click-right, etc Zimbra also offers a kit of development for Windows Mobile, making it possible to create synchronisables applications.

Other extensions allow synchronizations with the waiter by using protocols Internet standards, including WebDAV (XML), LDAP, ICal, HTTP (S), smtp, IMAP, POP3 and CalDAV.

Zimbra is a Free software and Open source published under free license (partly: the Outlook connector, amongst other things, is not free).

In January 2007, the editor of Zimbra affirmed to have 6 million users.

September 17th, 2007, Yahoo repurchases Zimbra for 350 million dollars.

Compares itself with

• Free: Scalable OpenGroupware.org (SOGo), PhpGroupWare, OpenGroupware, eGroupware, Hula project, PHProjekt, OpenChange, Kolab, Open-Xchange, OBM Groupware

• Owner: Lotus Notes, Microsoft Exchange Server,….