Bally Chohan - News, Views & Reviews on Information System

Yahoo just acquired Zimbra for 350 million bucks, TechCrunch reports and Yahoo confirms. In Zimbra’s own, slightly cryptic words…

Zimbra is open source server and client software for messaging and collaboration – email, group calendaring, contacts, and web document management and authoring. The Zimbra server is available for Linux, Mac OS X, appliances, and virtualization platforms. The Zimbra Web 2.0 Ajax client runs on Firefox, Safari, and IE, and features easy integration / mash-ups of web portals, business applications, and VoIP using web services.

Yahoo says:

Zimbra is a global leader in email and collaboration software and its services are aimed at universities, businesses, and ISPs worldwide, which is a major driver of what made the company so attractive to us.

Yahoo in their blog remarks, “We see great opportunities to incorporate some of [Zimbra’s] best-of-breed* features (I really like their calendaring) into Yahoo!’s industry-leading communications products.” Mike Arrington, who calls Zimbra an “online/offline office suite”, adds that he wouldn’t be surprised if Yahoo picks up online office maker Zoho.com next. “That is, if they really want to dominate own this space and be a credible threat to Google Docs.”

Source : blogoscoped