Yahoo!'s Zimbra spiffs up iPhone support

Stephen Withers
Friday, 29 August 2008 12:04

IT Industry - Market

Taking a leaf from Apple's book, Yahoo! subsidiary Zimbra has added over-the-air, two-way synchronisation of emails, multiple calendars and contacts to its Zimbra Mobile for iPhone software.

Zimbra's main product is the Zimbra Collaboration Suite (ZCS), offered in an open source edition and the commercially-supported Network edition. ZCS combines email, contacts, calendar, VoIP and   document authoring.

Zimbra Mobile provides push synchronisation to smartphones including Java-enabled handsets as well as iPhone, Windows, Palm and Symbian devices.

iPhone support was previously delivered through the Zimbra Mobile HTML client and the phone's Safari browser, combined with the Zimbra Connector for Apple iSync to transfer address book and calendar information.

Company officials said the new Zimbra Mobile for iPhone 2.0 provides over-the-air two-way synchronisation of e-mails, multiple calendars and contacts between user mailboxes and mobile devices, and enables seamless 'push' e-mail service for ZCS Network Edition. It also provides over-the-air photo sync, so photos associated with iPhone contacts are added to the Zimbra address book.

"We believe the iPhone is a great device for both personal and business use, and we are dedicated to providing iPhone users with mobile support to match iPhone's enterprise class capabilities," said Satish Dharmaraj, Yahoo! VP and Zimbra co-founder.

What else did Dharmaraj say, and how much will Zimbra Mobile cost you? Find out on page two.