A quick search for Zimbra here indicates it’s only come up in two posts. Once in late 2005 when it was first (?) spotlighted on TechCrunch and again in a complimentary post by Om Malik (Om really seems to dig Zimbra’s mail client). Not surprising considering Zimbra targets enterprise users, education, and government environments, not really small business owners like me. Still, as a Yahoo shareholder, I’m curious what Jerry Yang is buying into.

Zimbra’s open source server is free for personal use, which has geek speaker wondering if or when Yahoo will close it.

According to the text on the Zimbra.com homepage they have 9 million “paid” mailboxes? Looking at the Zimbra prices page, are they getting $25 per user? Impressive numbers, if accurate.

This Yahoo acquisition seems more business-savvy than buying Buzztracker last week, but the price tag is higher too. Some $345 million higher (price on Buzztracker acquisition estimated at $5 million), according to a story on MSN Money.

Besides how much, the equally important question is what will Zimbra do for Yahoo? It’s not like Yahoo has a hugely impressive history of buying and utilyzing acquisition properties to their full potential (there are notable exceptions like Flickr).

The official acquisition release states (emphasis mine):

The acquisition of Zimbra will help Yahoo! to expand its presence in universities, businesses and through ISPs by enabling organizations to host e-mail on or off premises with their own domain. Zimbra’s offerings include rich, AJAX-based e-mail, calendar, and contact management features that can be used both on and offline. Their open platform enhances the user experience by enabling creative mash-ups called Zimlets that tie in valuable Web services to e-mail, and can be tailored to fit the needs of every customer.

So this is a niche sector move, eh? Niches can be very profitable, let’s hope Yahoo doesn’t just reel this in and let it languish. The deal is supposed to close in the fourth quarter. Yahoo stock price ended up 0.89% for the day at $24.95.

Did this post make you go hmm?

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