Zimbra now Yahoos! thoughts

[RyecoAaron]

Kind of funny but people posting comments on Anandtech are complaining because they don't want "their" Yahoo to be like Zimbra. My previous post was just the opposite!

[LMStone]

Congrats to the Zimbra VCs; in this market to find a deal that literally cashes them out at a great multiple speaks volumes as to Zimbra's quality and Yahoo's desire to own it.

I confess I'm surprised the NE customers who resell Zimbra as a SaaS solution (like us) didn't get a "Don't worry, you won't be reselling Yahoo Mail next year..." notice today.

I also REALLY don't like getting calls from our customers to whom we resell Zimbra as a hosted service asking me about the deal -- before I had heard of it. I thought there might be something on the support portal, but that's down right now (hmmm, any connection there?).

We had been having an engineer work on prototyping our migration from SLES9/Zimbra4.5.6 > SLES10/Zimbra5. I've stopped that work until we get some more clarity from Zimbra as to both the development roadmap and the revenue opportunities under the new regime.

We LOVE Zimbra; it's great and Zimbra 5 has got us very excited. But, we have a business to run, and that has to be foremost on our minds.

I'd like to believe the glass is half full (or higher), but it would be nice if Zimbra told us so.

Hope this comes across as constructive (albeit frank) criticism as intended, and not anything else.

All the best,
Mark

[nrc]

I'm concerned about what this will mean for the Zimbra product in the long run. Yahoo! has a reputation for being rather obnoxious in their branding of things and I'm concerned that this association may close as many doors as it will open. I really wonder what our business leaders would have thought of Zimbra if it had been a Yahoo! company when we were pitching it.

Our best hope is that Yahoo will stay well and truly in the background and simply provide the resources for Zimbra to accelerate the pace of their innovation. If that happens this can be a win for everyone.

[jholder]

Hi Mark-
To be honest, we didn't expect to make the announcement so soon either. We had all of our ducks in a row ready to announce at about 5PM PST today.

Well, somehow, it got leaked on a site, and like you, we had tons of questions from our customers. I actually was on lunch when I heard that it got leaked. When I got back in the office, there were about 10 IM windows open.

Our apologies for not getting notice out. Sometimes, the best laid plans go bad.

To everyone else- We're still reading, and taking in your feedback. We've always strived to listen to our community, and are doing so now as well.

Most of you gave Zimbra a chance when we burst onto the scene. While I can't promise anything in the future, if you stick around, I think you will like what you see.

All Zimbra releases (like 5.0) will still go on as scheduled.

John

[mmorse]

lol-yup, it was a bit of a shock around 1pm

Will Yahoo! remain committed to the open source community?
* Yahoo! has always supported the open source community and is committed to being open. We will continue to make source code available to view, modify and compile and unencumbered use.
Will the Zimbra server and Web client remain open source?
* Access to the Zimbra source code will always remain available and free.
Will new Zimbra projects and additions to the current Zimbra suite be open source?
* Zimbra will continue its practice of offering both an open and certified, network editions of the software.

Alright yahoo, stick to your word-don't decide to rewrite licensing...

I immediately think of the one thing google apps doesn't do (except for their search engine): The ability to host your own 'apps for you domain'.
It's hard to stay tethered to their servers-there are those who can't for security & a host of other concerns.

If it we're to happen that yahoo decides to become a SaaS instead of this just being an acquisition (no 'host your archives or backups with us' groans intended) then yes, I hope zimbra introduces a lot more benefits for the existing hosting partners.

We will continue to make our software available for download and continue to offer Zimbra software and support as usual. [...] Partnering continues to be a very important pillar of Yahoo!'s strategy and this combination will have a renewed focus on partnerships across the globe including our 350+ VAR and hosting partners. The combination of the two companies will only enhance the level of commitment and support to our hosting partners who will remain a key focus for us moving forward.

What will happen to hosted Zimbra partners?
* Everything will stay the same. Zimbra and Yahoo! are committed to enabling hosted offerings for our partners and we will be offering additional monetization models to our partners.

Originally Posted by riogd

I am glad you put together the acquisition FAQ like you did! It answered all of my burning questions except for one:
1. Does this mean the integrated Google search will go away and be replaced by Yahoo! Search ?
Of course that doesn't rate particularly high on a list of priorities but at least it might give someone a smile. And I would nonetheless be interesting in knowing the answer.

lamo-ya we all like google search better...
Guess the yahoo zimlets (the address regex for starters) will get some attention. And maybe not just a single image static map pull anymore (so you don't have to leave zimbra to move around the map)

For those with yahoo accounts-if you've tried their mail beta (which has been the same for the last year..) you still have to switch back to their 'classic' mail if you want your contacts/calendar-lol So I gather they will be pulling a LOT of ideas from zimbra on that one:

Will Yahoo! begin "eating its own dog food" by using the Zimbra product for its own employees?
* Yes. Yahoo! is excited about the technology and is working on a plan to implement it at Yahoo!.

Nice play on the zimbra server(s) 'dogfood'

However, my plea to yahoo for their own mail app (yes I know their not planning to use zimbra for their public mail app yet-maybe business hosting though?):
I just don't want the clutter. Yahoo, do you seriously need large graphical flash/gif ads on your homepage? Or even ads inside your ATT/SBC portal; those are paying customers once you reach that point. Still image is one thing-but blinking ads are just distracting.
Which is why the google text ads around gmail, etc are so nice; their generally unobtrusive-but they are also relevant to what your currently working on (if you put asside/don't mind them searching your email content).

What's holding google back?
a) The need to be always connected to the internet. While all their web interfaces work just fine if I have a decent internet connection, I'd suddenly be dead in the water if the internet connection fails.
b) They don't even want to attempt to provide support-they leave everything beta almost indefinitely so they don't have too.
c) I just can't download my entire collection of mail to my pda using pop...it would be full and crash in a second. It's either the whole thing or 'enable pop for email's received from now on'.
d) No IMAP - a huge standard.
e) google desktop (the intent is indexing your computer) but besides showing you old mail it doesn't help working offline -you don't sync mail/cal/etc
f) Still no drag+drop anywhere, even though there's ajax for refreshes etc it still feels like your using a html client just because you're forced to use the checkboxes & drop down menu for everything
g) You have to use greasemonkey to get a 'folder structure' come on that's ridiculous! What would be so hard with a sub-label structure:
+ zimbra
.. zimbra-forums
Yes I get they don't want any folders:

google: Labels are similar to folders because you can organize your mail based on common traits, but labels give you an added bonus -- you can apply more than one to a single message or conversation. Instead of having to pick one folder to hold a message, you apply a number of labels that relate to the mail. Then, access the message or conversation from all the labels that you've assign, or by searching for the label names.

They want label's -fine. Heck zimbra does folders plus gmail's current label system. And gmail can't do anything more than label the convo-you can't tag individual messages.

Google has some relaly nice apps-but no one seems to be putting them together into one cohesive unit-you open a new web page for everything.

Zimbra's lite client beats the pants off google's advanced one. What's so hard about it google?

I imagine that zimbra's been approached in the past by other big names like google, MS, etc.
Heck and I'm sure they've had job offers: /blog/archives/2005/12/zimbra_engineer.html

So I would be willing to bet that they've had tons of buyout offers that they've turned down because zimbra wouldn't stay alive in the merger. Sure google might have taken all the UI ehnancement ideas; but you can bet they would've ditched the ability to self-host. While, MS doesn't like anything open source. To them opensource=opensores. When they've tried-it's just been turned into format structure releases. With both you definitely wouldn't have the operating system choices available.

From what I see, both yahoo & zimbra have pledged to keep it open source.
And in most places they have too: Jetty, Apache, Tomcat, OpenLDAP, MySQL, Postfix, Amavisd, SpamAssassin, ClamAV, Perdition, NGINX, & little old Aspell...

Speaking of branding-I do vote no name change though!
It's such a good name /blog/archives/2005/09/so_whats_a_zimb.html
An ! tacked on the end is one thing but a name change is another.

The unknown always makes thing scary-

As the saying goes: Let us go and kill that thing which we do not understand and therefore fear.

[jholder]

Originally Posted by nrc

I'm concerned about what this will mean for the Zimbra product in the long run. Yahoo! has a reputation for being rather obnoxious in their branding of things and I'm concerned that this association may close as many doors as it will open. I really wonder what our business leaders would have thought of Zimbra if it had been a Yahoo! company when we were pitching it.

Our best hope is that Yahoo will stay well and truly in the background and simply provide the resources for Zimbra to accelerate the pace of their innovation. If that happens this can be a win for everyone.

Hi NRC-
As I said, I can't speak to the future.

However, the management team & myself (community guy) are all staying on to keep the focus of Zimbra on track.

We've got the best team, and now we're just joining forces with Yahoo's best teams.

The more resources we have, the better we can be discover bugs and fix them. It also allows us to develop cool-ass zimlets using Yahoo's resources.

Best,
john

[su_A_ve]

Ugh - We were about to get 1000 users fac/staff added to the 10K students we already have.

Nice timing... I don't like it, but not sure I can stop the train...

[kirme3]

I for one, welcome the new Yahoo overlords...haha j/k

Seriously, though, it's like Mike said, you usually won't end up seeing anything different for about a year. My guess is the first major noticeable difference will be with post 5.0 ZCS products, maybe 5.1 or 5.5(don't know how Zimbra plans to number after 5.0).

Some of the pro's I see in this are:
-Zimbra IM collaboration can be really great with the help of Yahoo Messenger
-Better work on large deployments(we have over 30,000 accounts so that's important for me)
-Better Spam filtering. I know it's great already, but Yahoo does a good job on their end too(my experience as a yahoo user)
-More Zimlets...what can I say, I like them
-more people to look at code and fix bugs

Some of the con's I see are:
-the current uncertainty in where things will go could make possible new customers nervous(I hope that is short lived though)
-Could turn into Yahoo's new mail interface which I am not a big fan of
-Yahoo not paying attention to the little guys out here...never forget about the little guy

For those worried about the conglomerate buying the startup, time will the best decider on that front. I suggest patience. But in the end, it is you that makes the decision where to go. Go where you are most comfortable. My experience in working on products that are bought by big companies(ahem...Cisco) has so far been good. I know Yahoo isn't the same, but I expect there to be a good ROI for them and Zimbra in this...with an end result of very happy customers.

I am the mail administrator at our EDU and have been very happy with the product, the support, and what I see coming in the future. I expect the high standard that has been set so far by Zimbra to be kept.

Congrats Zimbra and keep up the great work!

[Yann2]

Kirme3 raised an interesting question. Let's imagine that in a near future (1-2 years) people would like to see Instant Messenging bundled with Zimbra, like Zimbra also acting as an Instant Messenging server.
In the normal opensource thinking, there would have been no hesitation, and the protocol chosen would have been Jabber. But I can barely imagine yahoo using jabber for one of their product, as they already have... a wonderful proprietary IM protocol.

I think that in some point, the interests of Yahoo are not the same than those of Zimbra's customer. If we end up using Yahoo's search, yahoo's instant messenging (IM to be taken as an example here), that would be a bye bye for my company too.

As in the previous posts, I am also very concerned about this acquisition. I really hope Zimbra's spirit will still stay the same.

[JoshuaPrismon]

jholder:

Some other comments from slashdot and digg that I think my be good to get commented on:

• There are constant rumors of MS trying to buy Yahoo. This would now be a very very bad thing.
• Yahoo, unlike Google, likes to own their content and data. How does this fit with Zimbra's you own it model?
• Does Yahoo really have the cajones to go after Exchange in a way similar to what Zimbra has done, or will they cave the first time Microsoft dangles a unfavorable browser change in front of them?