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In 2007, Yahoo agreed to buy Zimbra for $350 million to help strengthen its own email service, and provide the service via the Internet to large organizations and businesses. Yahoo has been attempting to off-load Zimbra for several months now, and has approached VMware chief executive officer Paul Maritz about a possible sale, a source told Swisher.
According to a ComputerWorld blog from Vaughan-Nichols & Associates' Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, analysts suspect that the sale of Zimbra to VMware could create a proposition that would compete with Microsoft (www.microsoft.com) and its Exchange server market with VMware's virtualisation technology providing new virtual email appliance opportunities for the Zimbra messaging suite.
"Since VMware owns most of the server virtualisation market out there Zimbra could be a real killer app," Vaughan-Nichols notes. "Such a buy would give VMware the chance to expand and diversify its markets and push into cloud computing and hosted software as service offerings. But a much better idea will be to flog a hosted offsite email and collaboration service for customers that can't afford an onsite set-up."
Others note, however, that Zimbra may be a hard sell because of all the competitive open source options available. Open-Xchange chief technology officer Juergen Geck noted in a blog post, "In on-premises, enterprise type installations VMWare is a very strong contender. In hosted environments it is just an additional price tag."
Geck concludes, "The hot and upcoming deployment model in the groupware market is hosted services. Started by Google, re-inforced by Microsoft, implemented by ISPs like Network Solutions or 1and1. Which is exactly the opposite from where VMWare and Zimbra offer the most benefit."
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