Zimbra did not release any information about the pricing for this hosted solution, but the company guarantees a 99.9% uptime and will provide 24/7 support. Otherwise, the hosted Zimbra platform provides the same feature set as the self-hosted version, though faculty and staff get a few extra features for group scheduling and Outlook synchronization. Zimbra also offers schools the option to run advertising on the service, though we assume that most schools will opt out of this.

In the educational market, Zimbra is competing directly with Google, which has been providing an 'Education Edition' of Google Apps for about two years already, and which, thanks to the inclusion of Google Docs and Sites, provides a slightly more comprehensive feature set than Yahoo currently can.

Until now, only users with paid Yahoo Plus accounts had POP access to their email. Now, all Yahoo users will get offline access to their accounts through the Zimbra Desktop via the arguably superior IMAP protocol.

Yahoo bought the email and messaging company Zimbra for $350 million in September 2007, soon after Zimbra had launched its offline capabilities. The Zimbra Desktop runs on top of Prism, a Mozilla Labs product, which, just like Gears, is meant to allow users offline access to their web applications.

Besides working with Yahoo mail, Zimbra also supports all other IMAP and POP capable accounts, as well as, of course, accounts hosted on a Zimbra server. Zimbra has predefined settings for Gmail, AOL, and Yahoo accounts.

Still Beta

After one alpha and two beta releases under Yahoo, Zimbra is still calling this new version a beta, but given that fact that they are releasing it to all Yahoo users, the company must feel pretty good about the stability of the application. In our tests, we did not experience any crashes or other problems with the Windows and Linux client, though we did not test the Mac version.

The Zimbra Blog also lists a large number of other updates and new features to the application, including built-in notifications, minimize to tray on Windows, showing the number of new mails in the tray, and a few other minor updates.

Only Mail

One thing that is still sorely missing though (or at least we couldn't find it), is syncing calendars, tasks, files, contacts, etc. Yahoo is surely planning to do this in a future release, but right now, this does reduce the usefulness of the Zimbra Desktop quite a bit.

Why Zimbra Only?

The big news, however, is definitely that all Yahoo users now have offline access to their email accounts. Of course, cynics might point out that all Yahoo would have to do is flip one switch and all its users could just use any email client they wanted for offline access. Those same cynics might point out that Yahoo is mostly doing this to justify the $300 million investment in Zimbra. However, at least Yahoo's users now have one option to get offline access to their messages.

Zimbra is already available on a host of mobile platforms such as Windows Mobile, Palm, Nokia, and Blackberry. Their latest support for the iPhone 2.0 platform will help to increase their market share. While the iPhone has progressed with its support with email, documents and more, Zimbra is looking to make it easier for its users to stay synchronized regarless of the platform.

Enteprise Capabilities

Zimbra Mobile for iPhone 2.0 software provides users with enterprise class features including OTA synchronization of e-mails, calendar and contacts. Zimbra Mobile for iPhone 2.0 software will allow iPhone users to maximize their business functions on the iPhone. Additionally, Zimbra Mobile for iPhone will enable OTA photo-sync, so photos associated with iPhone contacts will sync with the Zimbra address book as well.

Zimbra has provided numerous ways for uses to access the Zimbra Servia via the iPhone including:

• IMAP / POP - Standards based access to email only
• Connectors - Use Zimbra's Connector for iSync (Mac) or Outlook (PC) to sync address book and calendar; combined with IMAP email it is a completely native UI solution. (Network Edition only).
• Mobile Web Browser - Zimbra Web Client is optimized for Safari on the iPhone; you can take advantage of iPhone's unique browsing capabilities to access your email, address book, calendar and more.

The users interface for accessing Zimbra's services via Safari on the iPhone is gorgeous and efficient. Zimbra makes great use of the screen real estate by providing a plethora of options right from the start. The new interface for the iPhone gets even better with a navigation menu at the top of the screen and important information right below it. This minimizes the number of finger tapping you'd normally have to do with the previous design.

Off to a Good Start

Zimbra is now approaching the same area territory Google is dominating at this point. However, the new Zimbra Mobile for iPhone 2.0 is looking to be off to a good start with more than enough features available from the iPhone to keep its users happy. Users can test Zimbra Mobile for iPhone by heading to Zimbra's Hosted Demo page.

Dan Farber has a great write-up of Yang's speech on ZDNet, so in this post I'll summarize that and give some analysis on Yahoo's future.

Dan Farber reported:

"Yahoo Mail (communication services) serves as the hub, but the interface also includes third-party applications and social context. Connections are contacts, and based on frequency and volume of communications email is reordered on the strength of the connections. The page also includes updates from connections, showing what is relevant rather than just relatively static inbox."

Interesting to note here that Google is also looking to use Web email as a hub for social networking. So both Yahoo! and Google are really targeting email to get users attention and integrate social web products.

Image: Dan Farber, ZDNet

Zimbra Integration

Yahoo! will include Zimbra in the Life! strategy. Zimbra is an open source mail and messaging platform, which became famous in the web 2.0 world for its mashups ability. It was acquired last year by Yahoo; and so it's exciting to know that Zimbra will be utilized more fully in Yahoo's product range.

Yahoo Go 3.0 - Widgets Galore

Finally, Yang showed off the new version of its Yahoo Go mobile platform. Labeled Yahoo Go 3.0, it will introduce widgets for things like email and Flickr, enabling those Y! products to be better utilized on mobile phones. Go will also become an open platform for third party widget developers - see our coverage of this last night. As Marshall wrote, unlike Google's Android OS, the Yahoo! Go platform will work on more than 250 mobile devices that Go already works on.

Yahoo has partnered with the likes of eBay, Viacom and News Corp on widgets for Go. Yahoo is also working with LG Electronics and other phone vendors to make widgets run natively on phones.

From the user side, a new widgets gallery called MySnippets will give users feeds and services that can be embedded in Yahoo pages. A beta version of 3.0 will be available later today by directing your phone’s browser to http://beta.m.yahoo.com

Conclusion

It looks like Yahoo is finally beginning to tie together its many 'best of breed' web 2.0 products (Flickr, Zimbra, Mail, Go) into an integrated product offering. Mobile has been an area of development at Yahoo for some time - they appear to be doing more work than Google and Microsoft in the mobile portal / social networking arena, and with Go 3.0 it might crack the mainstream in a big way. Yahoo has also been a leader in terms of open standards - see our coverage of Ian Rogers about the Media Web for one example.

Time will tell whether these moves by Yahoo will get them out of the funk they fell into during 2007, but Yang's speech at CES had many encouraging signs.