14 DAY TRIAL // Yahoo hasn't been doing great for several years now. Its vast arsenal of services and web proprieties has managed to provide it with enough revenue stream to survive but, at the same time, it's holding it back from any real growth. The company has been shutting down or selling off services for a while now, and one product which has been on the 'to-go' list for a few months is Zimbra. It looks like Yahoo may have finally found a worthy suitor for the white-label email suite in VMWare which is reportedly interested in acquiring the product.
All Things D's Kara Swisher cites sources close to the deal and says that an announcement is coming soon and that the negotiations are very close to an end. Cnet also confirmed the deal through other sources, so the rumor is looking solid. As expected, both companies declined to comment, and the financial details are unknown. It is very likely, though, that the sell price will be significantly lower than the $350 million Yahoo paid for Zimbra when it acquired it in 2007.
All Things D says that Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz personally approached VMware CEO Paul Maritz and proposed a deal. VMware has been expanding rapidly from just a virtualization company, adding several new products and services for the enterprise market. Zimbra would be a welcomed addition to the line up as it would complete the offering at the higher level.
This means that the company could provide its customers not only with the infrastructure and low level software, like its vSphere hypervisor, but also with the cloud apps that run on top of the software stack. Zimbra offers a complete email solution for companies which can deploy an email server locally or use the cloud service the company also provides. It offers a web-based client too, as well as mobile and desktop clients so users can check out their mail from anywhere. It also supports third-party clients like Microsoft Outlook and Mozilla Thunderbird.