Yahoo! has acquired Zimbra, a provider of web based email and online/offline office software, for a cash price of $350m (£175.5m).
Zimbra's product is essentially a web based version of Outlook, though the company recently added Zimbra Desktop, which allows users to access email and other functions when offline.
Zimbra is currently the email provider for a number of colleges, ISPs and universities, as well as businesses like Digg and Mozilla. The company had around 6m users of its service in May this year.
Yahoo! Mail is the current leader in web based email services, with around 250m users. The acquisition strengthen that position, as well as helping Yahoo! create a suite of office applications to compete with the likes of Google and Microsoft.
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Graham Charlton is Senior Reporter at Econsultancy. Follow him on Twitter or connect via Linkedin.
Posted 18 September 2007 10:42am by Graham Charlton with 1 comment
Topics: Business to Business
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Graham Charlton
Online Advertising
4:48PM on 18th September 2007
Thanks for the coverage.
To clarify, Zimbra actually works *with* Outlook, too, and other email clients like Apple's Mail.app. Zimbra synchronizes the calendars and contacts of these clients, as it does over-the-air with mobile devices like Palm, Windows Mobile and Blackberries, and upcoming full support for the iPhone with iZimbra.
Also, Zimbra is available and used by many individuals and businesses, who either use a hosting provider, or host a Zimbra server on their own premise or in a data center. It's a competitor on this level with Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes.
The acquisition by Yahoo! will enable Zimbra to compete even more effectively with Google Apps. With interest and your permission, more info in our blog post about the acquisition: http://blog.01.com/?p=325