Zimbra Selects Webtide as its Application Server for Zimbra Desktop

Zimbra picks Webtide and Jetty to support its web-based online and offline email and messaging service, used by over eleven million users

Webtide, the main developers of leading open source HTTP server and Java web container, Jetty, today announced that it has been selected by Zimbra as its web and application server for Zimbra Desktop.

Jetty is a lightweight, low-footprint and robust web and application server. Due to its small size it is easily embeddable yet is a fully-featured next-generation Web 2.0 server which allows many concurrent connections to handle multiple requests in the most efficient manner.

Zimbra Desktop is an online and offline email and calendar client for accessing your Zimbra or any standards based email server. It has all the Web 2.0 functionality of Zimbra’s Web Client, including conversation view, tags and Zimlets (add-ons that run on top of the Zimbra platform), but it also includes faster search, a self-organizing inbox and larger mailbox limits. It is cross-browser, and cross-platform, running on Windows, Apple and Linux. Users can write email, add new appointments, and edit documents. Upon reconnecting, changes are automatically synced with the Zimbra server.

Zimbra Desktop is based on web technology known as Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) which allows the creation of sophisticated interactive web applications. Ajax is a methodology where parts of a page update without having to refresh the entire page, and with many multiple requests to handle, Zimbra was in need of a “server push” method, keeping requests open by the server until suitable events occur.

Zimbra needed a reliable, scalable server to work with Ajax that could handle the demands of its millions of users on its feature-rich collaboration and messaging applications. Additionally, the server had to be easily embeddable to match where they are utilized. Jetty had the best implementation of the methodology that supports server push, Comet. Traditionally, HTTP servers tie together one thread to each request, so that the thread will be held, no matter if the thread is waiting for resources from the other end. The Continuation pattern is a feature of Jetty that uses Comet to free the thread from waiting requests.

Because online and offline usage of Zimbra’s application is necessary, Jetty’s small size and ease of embedding allows it to run within the Mozilla Foundation’s Firefox browser.

Jetty is open source software, which significantly cuts down on costs associated with traditional models, and performs better than proprietary solutions for Zimbra’s needs, including its continuation features. Jetty, in fact, had a recent benchmark that showed it supported 20,000 users on an Amazon EC2 server running Jetty and Cometd. Zimbra relies on Webtide’s Developer Advice and Production Support to service its platform.

Zimbra is the leader in open source, next-generation collaboration and messaging software. It provides cross-platform and innovative experiences for service providers, higher education, and Fortune 1000 enterprises.

Andy Pflaum, VP of Business Development at Zimbra, said “Jetty has the flexibility and capabilities that we needed to deploy the first Web 2.0 offline collaboration client. We have been able to customize its deployment in innovative ways for our embedded and offline solutions. Webtide’s experts are very responsive to our inquiries and working with Webtide has made them almost an adjunct to our team of cutting edge developers and has smoothed our launch process.”

About Webtide

Webtide is a global company that specializes in supporting and serving scalable Web 2.0 applications using Java, Ajax, and Comet. The company is the lead developer of the open source Jetty:// Java web server and Hightide, a comprehensive toolset for the development of scalable web 2.0 applications..

Webtide engineers are core developers or contributors to Dojo Cometd, Apache Geronimo, Glassfish, Maven, ActiveMQ, Cargo, Agila, ServiceMix, Jetspeed, WADI, and a host of other open source projects. Webtide offers its worldwide clientele development and production support, development, and training. More information on Webtide products and services is available at www.webtide.com

About Zimbra

Zimbra, a Yahoo! company, is a leading provider of collaboration software for universities, businesses and service providers. Zimbra’s rich AJAX interface is available on or offline to dramatically improve the collaboration experience. Zimbra is available on-premise or on-demand through our extensive hosted partner program. More information at http://www.zimbra.com

Contacts

Prompt Communications on behalf of Webtide
Hazel Butters or James Gerber
US: 617-576-5763 / 617-291-9899
UK: +44 (0) 20 8996 1653 / +44 (0) 7780 687813
webtide {at} prompt-communications(.)com