Zimbra tips, examples & hosting blog.

We’ll be busier than ever for the foreseeable future, because today Yahoo! has announced the acquisition of Zimbra for a reputed $350M.

Zimbra will be reporting to the Communications Group at Yahoo!, where it appears it will remain independent, continuing to develop its channels, who have been material help in marketing and supporting the Zimbra Collaboration Suite.

We speculate that the acquisition is primarily in order to compete with Google Apps, and that it’s natural to expect that there will be a version of Zimbra that will be distributed and supported directly by Yahoo to do so. Here is a current comparison between the two products, in table form: http://faqs.01.com/#33

One of the primary differentiators between Google Apps and Zimbra is that Zimbra can be hosted on premise by organizations, we strongly believe this will continue to be supported and developed, as it is a significant strategic advantage for Zimbra/Yahoo!. Note that Google has been developing a channel partner strategy, which is nicely matched by existing Zimbra’s success at having already developed relationships with more than 350 partners. Because of the acquisition of Zimbra by Yahoo!, as an authorized Zimbra integrator, we expect there will be a material rise in demand for on-premise Zimbra installations, as the uncertainty that was caused by Zimbra’s nature as a start-up is gone, and it won’t be just early adopters who decide on Zimbra over, for example, Exchange or Notes.

01.com is not only an integrator/VAR partner of Zimbra’s, but also one of the most automated hosting partners, with secure instant activation, enterprise infrastructure and 24/7 live support for its hosting customers. What does the Yahoo! acquisition mean for the hosting side of the business for partners?

We hypothesize that it will be a great advantage for all parties if at some point in the future 01.com is maintaining and supporting custom installations of Zimbra on Yahoo’s back-end infrastructure. After all, we have differentiated ourselves to date primarily on Service, and in a future where Zimbra is perfectly reliable, a future that Yahoo! seems poised to manifest, there will be no room to compete on who has better servers, network operations centers or internet connections. That’s for service providers supporting technologies that haven’t made it, yet.

http://www.zimbra.com/blog/archives/2007/09/yahoo_acquires_zimbra.html

Congratulations to Zimbra, and to Yahoo! for recognizing Zimbra’s value!

Answers to FAQs about the acquisition, including Zimbra/Yahoo’s commitment to continuing existing business models. What does this mean for us and our customers? Business as usual, with the added bonus of knowing you’re using a product that has enterprise-level stability, and the wherewithal to compete for the foreseeable future.

More Blog posts on this subject:

http://www.personalbee.com/105/19107648
http://ross.typepad.com/blog/2007/09/exit-yahoo-zimb.html
http://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/mt/archives/2005/01/scoop_google_to.php

        

Tags: acquisition

This entry was posted on Monday, September 17th, 2007 at 3:01 pm and is filed under News, Yahoo!, Zimbra. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.