As far as I can tell, most of the mainstream media has overlooked a possible jewel within Yahoo's sprawling operations. About a year and a half ago Yahoo acquired a promising Web applications start up called Zimbra for $350 million. Zimbra has a really neat Web-based version of what is essentially MSOffice that seems to be superior in many ways to Google Docs. The company recently released Zimbra 5.0 which added support for Microsoft Outlook 2007. It also supports BlackBerry Enterprise Server, J2ME-enabled handsets such as the Motorola RAZR, and a new version of ZCS for mobile Web browsers.
Some of the technology press thinks that Microsoft would either sell or let Zimbra wither, in favor of their own .NET Web based applications. Also Zimbra is open source and the folks at Redmond have never been to keen on open source software.
I think Microsoft should instead embrace Zimbra. As Apple has proven superior software drives market share and from what I read, Zimbra is getting rave reviews when it comes to Web-based collaboration and productivity software. It functions online, offline and in a mobile platform. Zimbra could come in handy during the coming Web-based apps-smartphone wars. You will note that Apple's has announced that it is going after the enterprise market with its new iPhone software update due in June.
From a financial standpoint Zimbra's software is smack in the center of MSFT's core business. Microsoft's high margin "Business Division" accounts for about 30% of the companies overall revenues and for the six months ending Dec 31, 2007 , nearly 50% of the company's profits. Microsoft Busines Division is by far its fastest growing division and it is home to such core franchises as Microsoft Office, Microsoft SharePoint and Microsoft Exchange.
Many in technology watchers are eagerly awaiting the day when desktop software is a thing of the past and when most of our applications are Web based. Of course this appears to be core to Google's strategy and a big reason why Google Documents, Gmail and Google Calendar and other web based productivity apps are such a looming threat for Mister Softee. Zimbra's productivity and collaboration software has been widely adopted at universities and works well on Blackberry's and other smartphones like Treo's and iPhone.
Zimbra is a keeper Bill.
