Yahoo to sell its open source unit Zimbra

By siliconindia   |   Tuesday, 05 January 2010, 19:38 IST
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Bangalore: Yahoo might sell its open source email unit Zimbra to VMware. Yahoo had bought Zimbra in late 2007 for $350 million but in last few months it has been trying to sell it. According to few sources close to the situation, Yahoo has been unable to find substantive bidders and hence Yahoo's CEO Carol Batz has approached VMware's CEO Paul Maritz, whom she knows well from their years as tech execs, reports All Things Digital. It was reported in late September that Zimbra was for sale by Yahoo, which has been targeting assets for "de-acquisition" that are not central to the strategies of its new management. Late last year when announcing its $100 million marketing campaign, Bartz said at a media briefing: "Most of our assets are very core to the company. Those that aren't, where it makes sense we will sell and where it makes sense we will shut down." The sale of Zimbra will present a possible complication, since its innovative technology has been integrated - although not as extensively as some have felt it should be - into Yahoo's popular email offering. But the Yahoo could easily license what it needs as part of the deal with VMware. But, sources said, Yahoo is now not interested in running Zimbra's white-label, open-source email commercial product, which serves the university and ISP markets. There, its main rival has been Google.