| Acquired by | Yahoo! |
| Price | $350M |
| Date | 9/07 |
| Terms | Cash |
| Website | zimbra.com |
| Category | Consumer Web |
| Phone | 650-212-7767 |
| Employees |
| Series C, 4/06 Accel Partners Benchmark Capital DAG Ventures Inventures Group Presidio STX Redpoint Ventures Eric Hahn Tim Haley Kevin Harvey | $14.5M |
One of the larger web 2.0 acquisitions of 2007, Zimbra’s sale to Yahoo for $350 million marks Yahoo’s continued attempt to regain some market share from Google and Microsoft. Zimbra, an AJAX heavy webmail and calendaring client with collaborative features, is primarily used by the enterprise market, but has opened up to other users through a deal with Comcast and an open-source freeware version.
Zimbra sold to Yahoo after it had reached more than 6 million paid mailboxes earlier in January of 2007. The number pales in comparison to Microsoft offerings, yet is very significant gain for a private company taking on formidable incumbents.
Zimbra’s collaborative suite is a mix between outlook at gmail. It maintains the traditional outlook appearance, but has smart features such as conversation view for emails. It keeps its mail folders unlike Gmail, but offers drag and drop capabilities. It’s open API has introduced other useful services into the mail/calendar duo. Zimbra will pick up phone numbers, shipping codes, addresses and other important data and provide users with a skype click to call button, shipping details and yahoo maps.
The company had $30+million in funding before the acquisition. It is not yet known how Zimbra will be incorporated into current Yahoo products.
| Website | zimbra.com/products/zimbra_mobil... |
Zimbra Mobile for iPhone 2.0 will allow users to have over-the-air two-way synchronization of e-mails, calendar, contacts, and photos between user mailboxes and mobile devices, and “push” e-mail service for all Zimbra Collaboration Suite (ZCS) Network Edition Standard or Professional users.
