Yahoo and Microsoft, what happens to Zimbra?
March 10, 2008
What will become of Zimbra if Microsoft acquires Yahoo? For those not familiar with Zimbra, it is a great open source email collaboration suite, with a nice (the nicest?) web front end and easy to use administration interface.
Check out the demo here.
Yahoo has been a leader in e-mail for more than 10 years. Yahoo Mail exceeds 1 billion visits each month. And Zimbra has grown quickly since Yahoo acquired the company. But what will become of Zimbra if Microsoft buys control?
“Zimbra is one of the few companies that challenged the Microsoft-controlled groupware space. Yahoo did so because they have a snazzy AJAX-based user interface,” said Mark Levitt, a collaborative research analyst at IDC. “Zimbra integrates various capabilities that don’t come with standardized solutions and makes the software available in a Java-based system that could either be installed internally or hosted by a third party.”
If Microsoft acquires Yahoo and decides to keep Zimbra, there is yet another question. Would Microsoft convert it to Windows .NET? Or sell it to another company that could turn around and compete on the e-mail front? Or put it on a back burner?
I suspect it would be left as an open source product, with support available from Microsoft very similar to its current setup. How sweet, MSFT supporting open source software, and making money from it. Sounds like a nice aside from acquiring a company. This also gives Microsoft a nice foot in the door in the open source community.
Another site: http://www.freezimbranow.org/ has a few thoughts as well.
What do you think?
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