VMWare to purchase Zimbra from Yahoo! Inc

The news has finally broken – VMWare have confirmed the rumours and announced that they have reached a definitive agreement with Yahoo! Inc to purchase Zimbra.  Zimbra.com has more on this announcement.

Whilst we have not known the identity of the purchaser, we have known for some time that a sale had been imminent and have been working with senior Zimbra colleagues to understand what a change of ownership would mean to Zimbra partners and customers.  All I can say at this stage is that without doubt, Zimbra are extremely positive about prospects and are very committed to product development and the current partner strategy.  Remember, these are the same Zimbra staff who went through the last buyout back in Jan 2007 (Jan seems like the month to sell Zimbra ;-)) – everything they told me then turned out to be correct.  Most of the original senior executive team and product developers have stayed the same since before Yahoo! and all are still very committed to their original mission to build better email – I have every reason to believe that the VMWare purchase will only help further their mission.