Zimbra now Yahoos! thoughts

[tbovingdon]

One of the main reasons i switched my clients to zimbra was i liked the "small town" feel of the company. (not to mention the ease of use and cost!)

Have a problem, call or email and they are there to help you and unlike my experience with the bigger companies M$ for one, Intuit, Sage, Netgear to mention others, Zimbra employees, and community alike seemed to individually care about every client/customer they encountered.

I too would have preferred a "google" buy out over yahoo, especially since in canada rogers cable and yahoo are a "team", and lord knows how bad rogers software is. But if it were google who had bought zimbra, i am sure we all would have another set of .... "problems"

I would have to agree with all of the sys admins on here, I am worried how this is going to change zimbra. I have both paying customers on the Network Edition and Clients on the open source edition, i have migrated customers away from exchange, and proposed exchange vs zimbra solutions, where clients have chosen zimbra for price, features,and my persuasion, based on that "small town" feel.

I Hope and pray that this buy out is more transparent than i think it will be.

[dijichi2]

The OSS version will always be just that, and if it starts to include ads and other functionality that people may not want, the license permits you to edit the source, recompile and bingo, problem gone. That said, I dont see that ever happening.

OSS license includes mandatory ads (well, logos/badges) and is not permitted to remove this. Any derivative work must contain different but similar badges. The nearest OSI license to this was recently very controversially passed and still isn't this restrictive. This would pretty much preclude the source from evolving on its own should Zimbra close ranks.

[p24t]

My first comment to my boss? "Maybe that Yahoo Maps zimlet will finally work now."

Seriously though, I really hope this is a good deal for all of us involved. Yahoo obviously has a lot of financial and technical muscle that Zimbra may be able to put to use. Then again, I tend to avoid most things with the Y! logo on them. I've never really been that happy with most of their offerings, and they tend to go with the 'big flashy' look.

I can see this going 2 ways (obviously) - either Zimbra maintains its identity, and just has some Y! injected into it, via logos, search, integration etc., or Zimbra slowly disappears into the Yahoo conglomeration.

Yahoo backing is obviously big. Zimbra doesn't have any worries at this moment (not that they did before) and their future is set, whether it's as Zimbra or as Yahoo, the technology will continue to be developed, and I assume you'll all get to keep your jobs.

Injecting money could help out the dev process at Zimbra. I'm personally hoping that 5 will be released sooner than it says on the pm (but I've been hoping that for a while now.) My company is actually waiting on 5 to be released (or at least a solid RC) to implement.. I blame someone else for not telling me we needed Shared Folders. I expect that the Zimbra NE will continue to be maintained, improved, and expanded. Adding some Y! featured might really be nice, better RSS feeds, maybe integration/mashup with more Y! services, financial, etc.

Then again, we might see Zimbra go away. Not entirely, as Yahoo purchased a technology, and obviously wants to make use of it. Non-hosted solutions haven't been Yahoo's big thing up til now, and I haven't seen any signs (other than this) of them changing. For Yahoo, it's 'come to our site' not 'host it yourself' - something that Zimbra obviously doesnt fit into. Whether they're moving on a new strategy or just acquiring technology will remain to be seen. (see "extend its email leadership to the University, Business and ISP markets" - their new strategy?) I don't think this bodes all that well for the OSS version. Sure it will still be offered, but I don't want, as someone mentioned, 'Yahoo ads attached to all emails sent.' Yahoo will obviously want to make their mark on the product, since they just dropped a couple bucks on it... whether this means more ads, banners, etc. I imagine that the OSS version will jump out at you Y! on a regular basis.

"We are committed to keeping the current source open and available for use and we will continue to offer the network version that will contain value added proprietary features on top of the open product."

What makes me nervous is that only the current source will stay open - which means no updates for the community version.

According to the FAQ, "Zimbra will continue its practice of offering both an open and certified, network editions of the software." - I assume that things will stay the same along this front. My concerns lie more along the lines of future development. There was lots of talk about 'grow our footprint at an accelerated pace' and the like, but not as much talk about future of the product. Will Zimbra 5.x be the last major set of releases? Well it slowly disappear into Yahoo? "Will Yahoo! keep the Zimbra brand name? This is work in progress. Stay tuned."

Personally, I'm no longer going to implement the OSS for my own personal stuff at this point. Since we've already paid for it at work, we're obviously going to use it (once we get 5 anyway.) I don't know what's going to happen to Zimbra yet, only time will tell.

I expect this is good news for all involved. Obviously I, as most of us do, have misgivings about it, but I expect most of those will be aleviated. If not, then Zimbra will be relegated to history as "oh, that looks like the Yahoo mail client."

Everything aside, congrats to the ZImbra team.

[dballing]

.... I am in a complete panic over this. My experience, both from inside and after Yahoo and I parted ways, is that "whatever Yahoo purchases turns to crap". It's not unheard of for Yahoo to buy companies and then completely ignore them for two years straight with no funding or progress (see "WebRing"), or to completely torpedo a working business model (see "Broadcast.com"), or to take a product that people loved and turn it into something they hate (see "eGroups"). In at least one of those cases ("eGroups"), the incoming engineers were completely ignored, denigrated, etc., until they were basically all gone within 18 months, leaving Yahoo with a codebase it hadn't developed and didn't understand.

In all of these cases, we heard the platitudes of "we love the team we've bought", "this is a partnership, not an acquisition", blah blah blah. That's all press-release garbage, spun by marketing people. The proof is in the history, and Yahoo's history with regards to acquisitions is not good.

Maybe I'll feel warm and fuzzy after a call I've got scheduled with Zimbra this afternoon, but ... phew... he's got a lot to overcome on that front.

[philpac]

I'm not worried about Zimbra going down the pan (as a lot of yahoo purchases have apparently) cos I trust the guys at Zimbra to keep working on it, it's their baby after all. The thing that worries me is freedom of choice...

Right now people are free to develop zimlets and so forth based on any API/Tool they can find... GoogleMaps, Yahoo Maps, anything... I'm worried that at somepoint, to please Yahoo their going to have to say "Right, no more google tools, no google translate, no google maps, if Yahoo does it, it must be theirs" because that would be a shame. My guess is that the Zimbra guys probably can't/shouldn't give any assurances either way.

Otherwise good work so far, you guys deserve the payday... keep up the work on V5!

[Arglex1]

Originally Posted by jholder

Please feel free to post your thoughts on Zimbra and Yahoo!!

Thoughts -

In my initial reaction:

I am the Sr Systems Admin for our company. I implemented Zimbra Network Edition as an alternative to problematic other collaboration suites.

I have relied on Zimbra's support, wiki, and open nature in order to make this one of the best roll-outs for our company. So far, I have received nothing but praise from the people that matter in our company.

A concern: As a corporate customer with an established technology in place, I would hope that this acquisition does not change Zimbra's business model. I have read the press release, but also know that Yahoo is a marketing monster.

I would prefer to keep the zimbra logo and company name as part of our system. When people see the Zimbra logo on our web portion, it is not an issue. People may be concerned that we do not host our own email once it shows Yahoo. We are a very large government contractor and this is very important for security reasons.

Ads. Yahoo runs an add based business model. Our company has paid a very nice price for the Network edition and I will be extremely upset to see any adds in our Network version of Zimbra.

Zimbra and Yahoo also should keep in mind legal issues. Companies have paid for licensing, the migration costs, hardware costs, etc. to migrate to this platform. If the support was to change or get bad for any reason, there could be legal issues. Hopefully this is not the case and we will remain happy zimbra customers.

[peng1can]

Nothing that hasn't been said before, but another voice to the chorus.

- The general sentiment in our office has been, "ick."

- We just bought a 3-yr contract a month ago. That probably would *not* have happened (and maybe not at all) had we known about this. I don't know how many other customers feel that way, but it should be interesting to see how Zimbra sales go for the next few months.

- Jholder speaks of how it's a great partnership. That's what frustrates me about all these stupid buyouts... What was so wrong with a customer-vendor partnership? If 'nothing is going to change', then why couldn't Yahoo have simply bought services from Zimbra?

- Around here it's Comcast vs AT&T Yahoo. I wonder what Comcast thinks of the deal.

- We'll be patient, but we're already discussing "escape routes" and we've only known about this for an hour. I hope that speaks volumes to the Zimbra management.

[mmorse]

Around here it's Comcast vs AT&T Yahoo. I wonder what Comcast thinks of the deal.

Lol-
02 Comcast aquires AT&T Broadband ISP-Planet - News - Comcast, AT&T Close Broadband Merger
So the gist is that Comcast sticks to cable and at&t to DSL, ameritech/sbc (and for that DSL -which was formerally mainly was SBC- Yahoo is the content while AT&T provides the network).

Recently, Comcast was tired of paying for oursourced mail, so they switched to Zimbra /blog/archives/2007/05/comcast_zimbra_future_of_unified_messaging.html

Meanwhile AT&T tries to get back into Fios & TV services.
& Yahoo acquires zimbra.
+ :

Garlinghouse said it was just the latest acquisition his company has made to become the preferred Internet media partner for other industries, building on deals with eBay Inc, Comcast, and a newspaper consortium. Recent Yahoo acquisitions include advertising companies Right Media and BlueLithium. http://.reuters.com/article/mergersNews/idUSN1736752020070917

It's just one big loop-everyone's 'separate' but they depend on each other in so many ways. Welcome to the internet.

Just stay tuned-i'm sure answers will come in a bit.

Will Zimbra customers be affected by the acquisition?
No. Yahoo! and Zimbra remain committed to the existing product, on-premise software, ISP partners and markets. Together with its partners, Zimbra will continue to serve service providers, educational institutions, government, non-profits and businesses.

Flickr's still here...

[mmorse]

To add some humor to the tense situation:
Ever see Colbert's circle? The New AT&T
> link dead see: YouTube - AT&T

To the IM comments, at least yahoo & msn now actually pass your ID back and forth (not talking sign into both at once, you still pick one account, just msn users can im yahoo users & vice versa using MSN or Yahoo messenger) wouldn't it be sweet if they all did it? instead of having gaim/pidgen/trillian you could move to one ID... good luck getting AIM & Google to go along though...

[kevlatimer]

I haven't signed up to the NE agreement yet - that decision will take place on Thursday when I speak to my manager with the costs. However, my opinion has now changed from "recommended" to "recommended, but..." and it's a big "but". To be honest, the recommended is only there because of the work already done in preparation.

I wouldn't have been happy if Google had bought it either, but out of all the big companies who could have stepped in with the cash, Yahoo is only preferable to MS in my opinion. I would have been so much happier if Zimbra (inc.) had said "Thanks for the offer, but we're doing okay on our own". I can't see how Yahoo will help in any way that interests me as a sysadmin, but I can already see the dark clouds rolling in.

Partnering with a large-ish hosting business with a vested interest in the future of Zimbra would have seemed like a good move, but selling up to a company with their own infrastructure and a business model based around ad revenue certainly doesn't. Yahoo's documented interest in SaaS makes me worried about the direction of Zimbra and it's suitability as an internal collaboration system for SME's. The noises of MS's interest in Yahoo worries me even more.

A few years ago the future of OS collaboration seemed pretty rosy, with the likes of Zimbra, OX, e4l and Kolab coming in leaps and bounds, and proven techs like OpenMail and Netmail reinventing themselves as the OS-friendly Scalix and Hula. Scalix has gotten into bed with Xandros (and therefore tarred with an MS brush) and seems more intent on sales than developing (still no native antispam/AV), Hula has been pulled as Novell look increasingly shaky, OX is just messy, Kolab is just confusing and e4l vanished as an OS project. It's all a huge shame if you ask me.

It's all well-and-good Zimbra employees saying "it's business as usual" but (and this is no sleight on the honesty of any who've posted, who I'm sure have the best intentions) if this kind of news comes out of nowhere who knows what is next. Choosing an email/collab platform is a huge decision for a company and I'd certainly not have staked my reputation on anything Yahoo was involved with before today.

Just my two-penn'orth. Maybe my mood will lighten tomorrow.

Kev