----- "Josh Sled" <[email protected]> wrote: > Stanley Brinkerhoff <[email protected]> writes: > > It appears that VMWare bought out Zimbra. Any thoughts on why? It > seems outside VMWare's normal vertical to enter the end user > application world. > > RedMonk's Stephen O'Grady has his usual thorough analysis: > http://redmonk.com/sogrady/2010/01/13/vmware-zimbra-qanda/
I think that article is a pretty good breakdown. While there are a number of sites that have single-server Zimbra installations, the profitable customers to them are really the big schools and ISPs that have medium- to large-scale cluster installations, the kind of thing where virtual machines can offer you some flexibility. Since virtualization is gradually becoming more of a commodity, VMware needs to branch out beyond just the server platform and into what you do on top of it. I was worried when Yahoo! first bought Zimbra, but then they largely just ignored them. VMware seems to be talking consistently about speeding up Zimbra's existing development roadmap, which can't be a bad thing. God knows what they'll do to pricing, though. Right now -- at least when you're looking at a large number of seats; I dunno about small sites -- Zimbra's pricing is competitive. -- Scott Dellinger
