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Jan. 6, 2010

According to the Var Guy, there's a new rumor circulating that Zimbra may soon be acquired by open source virtualization provider VMware.

Zimbra is an open source developer of email applications for businesses and organizations of all sizes.

Specifically, the buzz suggests that Yahoo is planning to dispose of all the assets of Zimbra to VMware.

On any given day, Zimbra generates about 60 to 70 percent of its total revenue from channel partners, and about 450 of such partners are hosting Zimbra’s open source email for their customers.

Going back almost three years, Zimbra was acquired by Yahoo in 2007 for about $350 million. And so far, Zimbra’s channel partner strategy appears promising, according to some in the Linux community and to the Var Guy.

But nevertheless, Yahoo has been rethinking its business strategy amid fierce competition in the advertising segment with Google and Microsoft's Bing search engine.

Rumors of a potential acquisition of Zimbra by VMware have circulated for quite some time now.

If VMware does complete the acquisition, it could trigger more intense competition in some other segments of the open source community some observers think.

Additionally, some think that Zimbra could be a key player in the emerging showdown between VMware and Red Hat.

At present, Zimbra is a close partner with the Red Hat Enterprise Linux team, Alfresco and other open source companies pushing into key verticals like the U.S. federal government.

Overall, Red Hat’s big push for this year is Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization (RHEV) on servers and desktops. RHEV essentially positions Red Hat against VMware.

If VMware pulls this off and acquires Zimbra at the right price, it could easily trigger a reset for how open source companies are valued, and how their channel partner programs are designed.

Zimbra's core product is Zimbra Collaboration Suite (ZCS). It’s an e-mail and calendar server; think about it like a next-generation Microsoft Exchange server.

In addition to email and calendaring features, it provides document storage and editing, instant messaging and simplified administrative controls, in an award winning webmail user interface built with the latest AJAX web technology.

ZCS also provides mobility and syncs to desktop client applications. The server is deployed on commodity Linux and Mac server hardware.

It will be interesting to see how the rest of the IT community views this acqusition, and if it happens at all.

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Source: The Var Guy.

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