CalDAV (calendar extensions over WebDAV) is a standard protocol for sharing calendar and event information among users, who can also access their calendars while they are offline, according to Ryan Hughes, the head of open source at Zarafa (which means giraffe in Arabic).
As with other standard protocols, interoperability with other applications requires some testing, and Zarafa ensures that its CalDAV implementation works with iCal and Sunbird, Mozilla’s calendar application.
CalDAV support will be available in version 6.30, and it should be ready by the end of April, according to Hughes.
Zarafa is compatible with Outlook, and is distributed with an Outlook Web Access-style client. There is also support for iPhone mobile phones, Nokia N series and Windows Mobile E series through the open source Z-Push project, as well as support for the BlackBerry Enterprise Server.
There are three commercial versions of the product: Standard, Professional and Enterprise.
The license cost for the Standard version is around EUR 4,200 for 100 users for the first three years. The Professional and Enterprise versions are priced at EUR 8,000 and 12,800, respectively, for the same period and number of users. The professional version adds, for example, support for the BlackBerry Enterprise Server as well as deployment tools. The Enterprise version provides multi-server support.
