VORARI - Managed Cloud Servers & Zimbra - Latest Comments

Re: Latest News | Say NO to 0870 and 0845 - VORARI

Name — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 09:01:01 -0000

You can get alternative numbers to 084/087/0800 (which is charged fro if dialed from mobile) from http://www.veryclevermonkey.com/

Also, you can get some 0300 alternative as well which is also free from mobile.

Its also have some other useful functions like reverse search, search for companies by phone numbers (useful for reporting annoying silent calls when you don't know the company the number belongs to).

Re: Latest News | Say NO to 0870 and 0845 - VORARI

Pete Lans — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 15:40:05 -0000

0845 numbers can be cheaper than 01/02 numbers for weekday calls for some phone providers e.g Post Office Telephones, not to be confused with BT. Worth checking their price lists or your phone bill.

Evening and weekend calls to 01/02 are FREE

Re: Latest News | Snow Leopard and Zimbra - VORARI

vorari — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 20:30:11 -0000

Ok. Useful to know. This blog was specifically targeted towards hosted network edition customers and the end user client perspective. Apologies if this wasn't clear.

Re: Latest News | Snow Leopard and Zimbra - VORARI

malusmalum — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 20:24:35 -0000

I had the Open Source version of the server running on a Mac Mini. I upgraded the Mac Mini to Snow Leopard, and the server stopped working entirely.

Re: Latest News | Snow Leopard and Zimbra - VORARI

vorari — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 20:18:22 -0000

There is no Zimbra Connector with the open source version.

Re: Latest News | Snow Leopard and Zimbra - VORARI

malusmalum — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 20:13:23 -0000

The Open Source version of the server barfs if you upgrade to Snow Leopard.

Re: Latest News | Snow Leopard and Zimbra - VORARI

vorari — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 16:45:42 -0000

Worthwhile mentioning this as I've seen a number of articles claiming incompatibility between Zimbra and SL. Specifically this article: http://blogs.zdnet.com/virtualization/?p=1205

A lot of this confusion comes down to understanding the difference between Microsoft Exchange and Zimbra.

Zimbra is not and never has been an exchange drop in replacement. It is an open source alternative to Microsoft Exchange. There are other products that have chosen a business model where by exchange emulation is their ultimate goal with a lower TCO. The problem with that model is that you are limited to the exchange feature set and nothing more.

Zimbra's model is different. You can continue with the same end user client experience using a connector (available for Outlook, OS-X) and enjoy a lower TCO on the backend. But you also get an option to move beyond just Exchange with the unique features in Zimbra. Specifically it's unique Zimlet architecture, the integrated Wiki Documents, Briefcase etc.

Zimbra Network Edition ships with an Outlook Connector should you wish to use it with MS Outlook. It also ships with OS-X sync service connector that where possible uses open standards to communicate directly with server. At it stands today it uses CalDAV for the calendaring portion. The Zimbra web experience is much richer than any other client I have personally seen and it works in a variety of browsers.

I suspect much of the confusion might come down to the fact on the iPhone you do add your Zimbra credentials as an exchange server.

Re: Latest News | Snow Leopard and Zimbra - VORARI

tonygeno — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 08:44:39 -0000

I have installed it on several machines and it works great. You do get the reload preferences hickup, but other than that, it is working very well.

Re: Latest News | Zimbra: Mobile Me for business users - VORARI

darymcgovern — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 15:12:12 -0000

I read this thread a while ago when building up knowledge on how best to manage business email. Roll forward a couple of months having tried MobileMe, the corporate GMail solution and finally Zimbra as a managed service from Vorari, here are some findings.

MobileMe is not a corporate 'Exchange' solution and far from it. On a positive note it kept my iPhone contacts and calendar synch'ed, and sometimes I even received my emails. MobileMe works fine, if you just want to use yourname@me.com but it was a real pain if you wanted to use your own domain for the sending address. In the end I had to set up a POP3 account in conjunction with a MobileMe account and then use the MobileMe account to send the email with the POP3 address, which meant no-one ever received my emails from my iPhone as they were junked immediately. MobileMe is probably best compared to Hotmail or Yahoo private email accounts, and from that perspective it is probably a better alternative.

As for corporate GMail, overall it was a terrible experience. Firstly when I imported my Outlook .pst file it removed all of the nested folders and replaced them with top level tags. As for calender, contacts and iPhone integration I spent a weekend downloading this, that and the other. Having got it all set up everything felt very disjointed. Then there was things like Salesforce integration at which point I had enough and backed everything out to return to a simple POP3 solution with MobileMe to keep my iPhone contacts and calender in synch.

What makes me so critical of the previous solutions mentioned is that I have used Exchange based email with Outlook, and it is a benchmark that MobileMe and GMail simply don't measure up to. However Exchange is expensive and hard to administrate, so we decided to take a look at Zimbra and settled on a managed hosted solution managed by Vorari. It is now all up and running and I'm so happy with the solution that I took the time to find this original blog entry and share my experience.

Off the mark Vorari carried out an analysis our existing domains and provided a report of things that we needed to fix in order to address Spam issues etc. We opted for the Business Premium service that they offer and the migration was very straight forward with Vorari providing excellent support at each step. As for Zimbra it is easy to administrate, appears to have all of the Exchange features that I know and love with an excellent web client. It took me a day or two to decide to use the Zimbra Desktop client over Outlook because Outlook has better drag and drop attachment handling features; but what won me over was a Gmail equivalent 'tags' feature, the ability to group messages by conversation and the fantastic search feature that dare I say it, is even better than GMail's search.

As for iPhone integration, it took 30 seconds to set up and contacts, calendar and mail work absolutely brilliantly. I do like having a cup of tea while clearing down emails on my iphone and watching them disappear of the desktop client about 2 seconds later.

One very happy customer.

Dary McGovern
Managing Director
www.timetotrade.eu

Re: Latest News | Zimbra: Mobile Me for business users - VORARI

jmbaird — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 19:15:10 -0000

I am emailing replies but the original was from the web site. I will
review your services. Thanks.

Jeff

Re: Latest News | Zimbra: Mobile Me for business users - VORARI

vorari — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 19:07:16 -0000

We're currently on 5.0.15 at the moment and scheduled to go to 5.0.18 in about a month. We're an independent hosted provider and we specialise in hosted Zimbra and custom ZCS installations. Did you comment directly via the website?

There are two options for you:

#1 - Setup on iPhone via MS Exchange and ensure the push calendar/contacts in on.

#2 - Setup as other and select CalDAV account. In both cases my phone is up to date.

I sync over the air as well, not via iTunes.

Re: Latest News | Zimbra: Mobile Me for business users - VORARI

jmbaird — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 15:44:15 -0000

I have been successful with syncing my Mac's with Zimbra's iSync but
have not been able to get the calendar to sync on the iPhone. What
version of Zimbra and iSync are you using, maybe we are not current.

Is there a link showing the set up of CalDev for the iPhone. BTW I
sync over the air with mobile me not via iTunes - that could be
another factor.

Thanks. Do you work for Zimbra support? It is a good product.
Jeff

Re: Latest News | Say NO to 0870 and 0845 - VORARI

vorari — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 15:15:30 -0000

Finally!

New Ofcom rules should soon make it cheaper to call 0870 numbers. The measures - which will come into effect on 1 August 2009 - will also give consumers a much clearer idea of how much it costs to call these numbers.

The new rules will encourage communication providers to stop charging higher prices for calls to 0870 numbers from fixed lines and mobiles than calls to 'geographic rate' numbers.
They will also be encouraged to include 0870 calls in call packages on the same basis as geographic calls.

Communications providers that want to continue charging for 0870 calls at rates above those for geographic numbers will be bound by strict rules about how prices are publicised on websites and in promotional material at point of sale.

http://www.ofcom.org.uk/media/features/0870rules or go to the FAQ at

http://www.ofcom.org.uk/consumeradvice/landline...

Re: Latest News | Zimbra: Mobile Me for business users - VORARI

vorari — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 14:53:07 -0000

Hi. ZCS has full support for CalDAV. In fact using the Zimbra iSync connector for mac now syncs the Calendars only via CalDAV. I actually set my iPhone up to receive both push Calendars from Zimbra and as a CalDAV account a while ago. I noticed some odd behaviour on the CalDAV front from the iPhone:

Using ZCS Push on iPhone: Can add / reply / delete events. But can only see your own ZCS Calendars.

Using ZCS w/ CalDAV on iPhone: Can receive events - but they show up as a grey box for a specific event - you cannot modify them in any way.
*But* you can see all the other calendars that have been shared with you on the iPhone. So despite the fact that I see some duplication, I keep both so I know about shared events on the go.

Because ZCS works beautifully on the mac with iCal, CalDAV and Zimbra I have to assume this is a bug in the iPhone's CalDAV implementation, but it could be Zimbra.

There are new ZCS versions out every other month and Zimbra has an incredibly active development community. You can always check out the latest progress via pm.zimbra.com - you get full transparency and the ability to provide feedback direct to the engineering teams.

Are you considering ZCS as an alternative?

Re: Latest News | Zimbra: Mobile Me for business users - VORARI

jmbaird — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 10:38:14 -0000

Interesting. Does Zimbra fully support CalDav? If so, could the iPhone
or other computer interface with Zimbra calendar via CalDav?
Jeff

Re: Latest News | Zimbra: Mobile Me for business users - VORARI

vorari — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 05:45:30 -0000

Not in our plans :)

Mobile access is provided as standard with all our shared plans. If you purchase Zimbra direct for an enterprise (eg: self deployment) then you will have to pay for Zimbra Mobile.

Re: Latest News | Zimbra: Mobile Me for business users - VORARI

jmbaird — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 02:37:59 -0000

I believe the iPhone calendar sync costs extra.