Australian internet service provider (ISP) iiNet will move to VMware’s Zimbra collaboration suite for its web-based email platform with the purchase of one million mailboxes from the virtualisation provider.
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All customers with iiNet mailboxes will be migrated to the Zimbra mail platform between October 2010 and January 2011. Approximately 25 per cent of iiNet customers were using the Zimbra platform prior to the new agreement.
The mail platform will service some 652,000 broadband customers, including the 113,000 customers the ISP picked up when it recently acquired AAPT's residential customer base for $60 million. The provider has approximately 1,326,000 active services in total.
iiNet chief technology officer, Greg Bader, said in a statement that the suite would consolidate the service provider's mail platforms currently employed across the business using open source technology. It will also enable the ISP to deliver tasking, calendaring, mobile and social media capabilities to customers.
“iiNet’s goal has been to not only consolidate our various email systems, but to provide our customers with a solution that’s both user-friendly and comes with all the extra bells and whistles,” Bader said.
He said the ISP selected the Zimbra service because of its ease-of-use, features and ability to support iiNet’s current and upcoming product range. The ISP also selected Zimbra for its hosted business grade email solution which has been available to iiNet and Westnet customers since May.
According to Bader, iiNet has been an avid user of VMware technology through the virtualisation of its own infrastructure including the call centre desktop.
The suite comes with VMware’s web-based virtualisation platform which offers data loss protection.
Zimbra was acquired by VMware in January.