jordan willms on business, entrepreneurship, technology and the web

Zimbra, an open source server and client technology for next-generation enterprise messaging and collaboration, recently reached 6 million paid mailboxes. As a robust and affordable alternative to Microsoft's Exchange Server, Zimbra has continued to move upmarket and achieved tremendous growth over the past six months.

Two versions of Zimbra are available: a community-supported open-source version, and a commercially supported version ("Zimbra Network") with closed-source components. This foundation in open source, and the contribution back to the open source community has made Zimbra extremely popular.

When we all first heard about Microsoft's Zune -- it sounded like a decent contender for an Apple iPod competitor. Big screen, video, pictures, wireless sharing of music plus rewards for people sharing music. It sounded like it was to good to be true (or to good to be Microsoft). It sounded like a big fat powerful idea.

But reality and corporate trenches are a bitch. Here is only some of what went wrong.

Pay Per Sale to Universal

Despite what most thing, the decision to pay Universal for each unit sold was a relatively good strategic move. This will force iTunes to renegotiate with potentially different terms with the Major labels. ("If Microsoft did it, then so can you").

However, take special note that giving Universal a piece of the pie indicated that both sides are in agreement that there is a relatively large amount of piracy that happens on these devices. Therefore, the payment is basically a levy in MP3 players which goes right into the labels pocket.

Wireless