Zimbra is so damn cool
Posted September 17th, 2007 at 1:21 pm by Brad Garlinghouse, Communications & Communities
16 Comments / Filed in: Trends & News
If you’re a student at Georgia Tech or an employee at Digg or Mozilla.org, you know just how excellent your email and group calendaring experience is. That’s because it’s powered by Zimbra, creator of an innovative Ajax-based mail client that integrates email, contacts, shared calendar, search and VoIP into an incredibly cool browser-based interface. So cool that we’ve just entered an agreement to acquire Zimbra for $350 million.
Zimbra is a global leader in email and collaboration software and its services are aimed at universities, businesses, and ISPs worldwide, which is a major driver of what made the company so attractive to us. We’re constantly being approached by these entities for our expertise in email and communications. Combining the best of Zimbra with what’s made Yahoo! Mail the top dog in web mail will not only allow us to cater to these markets better than anyone, it will allow us to expand our presence to partners and consumers at school, work, and home.
Zimbra, named after a nonsensical Talking Heads song, made its debut at the 2005 Web 2.0 conference, leaving TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington saying: “Zimbra is so damn cool and full of Ajax awesomeness…” Here’s what Zimbra co-founder and CEO Satish Dharmaraj had to say about Zimbra’s raison d’etre in their October 2005 launch press release:
“… e-mail is broken… From overflowing inboxes to the nuisance of organizing correspondence, to the cost of managing storage, viruses, availability, retention and legal discovery and compliance, dealing with corporate e-mail has become a nightmare. Zimbra’s server and application innovations solve these problems for both end-users and administrators.”
Zimbra offers incredible technology. We see great opportunities to incorporate some of their best-of-breed features (I really like their calendaring) into Yahoo!’s industry-leading communications products.
If you’ve never experienced Zimbra, be sure to check out the demo. You’ll really notice the wow-factor when you hover over content in email messages and get pop-up previews. The phrase “tomorrow at 10:00 AM” will display any appointments you have at that time, “701 First Avenue, Sunnyvale CA” will launch a Yahoo! Map, a tracking number gives you package delivery status, a phone number lets you make a VoIP call, a flight number provides status details, and so on. Some of these are mash-ups called Zimlets, which developers can create on Zimbra’s open platform.
Zimbra’s technology, talent and extensive global customer and partner network have received amazing industry recognition, and we’re excited to welcome the entire team, including Satish, Ross Dargahi and Roland Schemers (also co-founders) as well as President and CTO Scott Dietzen, aboard at Yahoo!.
Brad Garlinghouse
Senior Vice President
Communications & Communities
(No Ratings Yet, Be First!)
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16 Comments Add your own
Sam | September 17th, 2007 at 2:29 pm
I did notice your Yahoo mail beta is awfully like Zimbra (for better and worse).
Congratulations on a fine purchase. I think my organization would purchase the full network edition if the terms weren’t pay as you go.
Gray Rothkopf | September 17th, 2007 at 3:31 pm
http://www.01.com is an authorized hosting provider and integrator for Zimbra. We think the news is very positive for everyone concerned, except our competitors.
Congratulations to Zimbra, and congratulations to Yahoo! for recognizing the value not just of their Zimbra Collaboration Suite, but also their partner network.
xxdesmus | September 17th, 2007 at 4:25 pm
I hope you make a free hosted version of Zimbra available for users. I’d love to use Zimbra, but I just don’t have the time or the means to setup my own server with it installed.
mikew | September 17th, 2007 at 5:08 pm
Did you get any peanut butter with this acquisition?
Paul Stamatiou | September 17th, 2007 at 6:06 pm
Yup, I’m a student at Georgia Tech! I just read about Zimbra being used to replace our 5 year old current webmail system, in our campus newspaper last week. This is fantastic news now that Zimbra is part of the Yahoo! family.
We don’t yet have the ability to use Zimbra but we should have it by early Spring ‘08; and they’re working on integrating it with our student homepage-type site, “BuzzPort”. Regardless, great news.
Yahoo! Mail User | September 17th, 2007 at 7:29 pm
WOW~ Congratulations! I hope I get to try it soon! =O)
Alex | September 17th, 2007 at 11:24 pm
Indeed a piece of great news. I hope Yahoo Mail Beta will be replaced by Zimbra. I simply hate the Beta…
Mike Abundo | September 18th, 2007 at 2:59 am
Congratulations. I can’t wait to see Zimbra features rolled into Yahoo Mail.
Ron | September 18th, 2007 at 6:44 am
Calendar and Notes are down in Yahoo! Mail. Is this because you’re busy integrating Zimbra’s Web 2.0 calendar and notebook into the Yahoo! Mail system? I hope so!
Alex Mayorga Adame | September 18th, 2007 at 9:59 am
When if ever would the Y! Mail account be ported to a Zimbra back end, are they already?
Alexis Kauffmann | September 18th, 2007 at 5:03 pm
The world’s gratest mail service - Yahoo Mail - even better with this acquisition? Can’t wait to see! Cheers!
Daniel Legal | September 19th, 2007 at 5:54 am
Our company LemonFree.com has been looking at possibly using Zimbra for a while. Now that such a big trusted name like Yahoo is behind it, I don’t think it will be long before we switch over.
Jonathan Crow | September 21st, 2007 at 10:27 am
What does this mean for using Yahoo! Mail offline? And what about Zimbra’s on-premise play, is Zimbra still going to be sold into the enterprise for installation behind the firewall?
Dog | September 21st, 2007 at 8:02 pm
Zimbra seems to be a very interactive software…..just from looking at the picture……even though I have never used it. Hope some of its best features will be available in Yahoo Mail very very soon!
Damian | September 22nd, 2007 at 10:09 pm
Zimbra looks like a client I already use. It’s called Gmail.
wespire | November 10th, 2007 at 12:07 am
I want be Georgia Tech’s student, but i very stupid =(
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