Sunnyvale (CA) - Yahoo’s Zimbra is expanding its presence in universities. In addition to the two million college mailboxes that already run on Zimbra’s email solution, the company hopes to become an "email as a service" (EaaS) provider, a term that refers to a customized email solution hosted by Yahoo's datacenters. So far, Zimbra had been focused on email solutions that customers install on their Windows, Mac and Linux boxes on site. But the company's vice president of marketing John Robb says that "education wants desktop neutrality," suggesting that EaaS is the solution.

The new ad-supported email service runs in Yahoo's datacenters and will be offered free of charge or as a branded service for $2 a year per mailbox for institutions, or $35 a year per faculty member. For comparison, existing on-premises Zimbra email managed by IT staff is priced at $1.50 per mailbox for schools $8 a year per faculty member.

The Zimbra Desktop remains the frontend of the service, but it now has an offline mode, so users can continue using their accounts even while the network is down. Various mobile platforms are supported, including Blackberry, iPhone, Java Mobile Edition devices and any notebook with a web browser. The service will first launch at Kansas State University and Kaplan Art Center College of Design in Ft. Lauderdale.

Zimbra’s announcement is seen as a first move of Yahoo's intention not to surrender the lucrative education market to its rival Google, which made significant progress in educational institutions with its Google Apps solution, a set of hosted online services on a custom domain, like Gmail, Docs, Calendar, Sites, etc. It is also another important step for the credibility of the software-as-a-service model that most analysts agree will become increasingly, especially now that Microsoft has announced its Windows Azure platform.

- - Not another idoit in Cloud Computing again.

Oct 29, 2008 11:30     

So before was Intel MID trying to rename the Smarthpones, now it is EaaS trying to be like Cloud Computing SaaS what the hell...
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Oct 29, 2008 11:32     

BTW the correct term for EaaS is SMS / XMS. Which includes voice mail, text messaging, news feeds (e.g. hockey scores feeds) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_Messaging_Service
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