20 Oct. Dozens of Software Vendors and Open Source Projects Integrate with Zarafa

Zarafa, the fastest growing commercial Linux-based groupware company in Europe, has benefited from the growing demand of organizations for integrated open source software. In the last four months dozens of software vendors and developers in open source projects have integrated or packaged software to Zarafa’s open source email and calendar solution. Some examples are SugarCRM, Alfresco, Ubuntu, Fedora and Univention. Integrated open source software enables organizations to achieve efficiency gains.

By linking Zarafa with a document management system (DMS), attachments in mail applications can be stored directly into the DMS.
Another example of an integrated open source solution is the real time replication of the calendar in Zarafa with the calendar in a system for customer relationship management (CRM).

More often integrated open source software is developed and implemented on request. Because of the open source code it is easy to maintain the integrated solutions for a longer period of time. Since vendors and technology partners support these integrations, clients of Zarafa are also able to receive contracts for maintenance and management.

Sander Mittertreiner, project leader of the ‘Open Source Desktop’ project of the Dutch Patent Office, part of the Ministry of Economic Affairs, says that he demands that software integrates with other solutions from software vendors. “We have asked our document management supplier O3Spaces to make an interface between their software and Zarafa’s mail system. Such an integrated solution really makes life easier for the end users’. Brian Joseph, co-founder and CEO of Zarafa: “Because of the extremely flexible architecture of Zarafa, I
expect our ecosystem to triple in 2010”.

The Novell/IDC Survey Report ‘Interest in Linux operability, virtualization, March 2009’ confirms the increasing value of interoperability. 67% of the respondents stated that interoperability and manageability between Linux and Windows is one of the most important factors when choosing an operating system. This is also confirmed by Sander Mittertreiner of the Dutch Patent Office. “Zarafa replicates the free/busy items in the calendar with more than 6.000 Exchange users within the Ministry of Economic Affairs. This makes migration less
complicated”.

NOTES FOR EDITORS
Press contacts
Zarafa International
Mirjam Scholtes, Communication & PR Manager
Tel: +31 1 52517716
Email: m.scholtes@zarafa.com

ABOUT ZARAFA
Zarafa is the fastest growing commercial Linux-based groupware company in Europe that enables Linux servers to share Outlook calendar and e-mail and allows web-based access by means of an AJAX-based web client. Many governments and corporations run with Zarafa.

It is the only groupware platform that includes open source ActiveSync compatibility, which enables organizations to have remote synchronization and pushmail for Windows Mobile, Google Android, Nokia’s Mail for Exchange and iPhones. Zarafa also offers full integration with the Blackberry Enterprise Server.

Zarafa’s head office is in Delft, The Netherlands and the company also has offices in Stuttgart, Hannover and Belo Horizonte (Brazil). Zarafa is the Arabic word for giraffe. Like a giraffe, Zarafa has the overview in the landscape of other applications to collaborate together in an open and friendly way.

More information is available at www.zarafa.com.