As we blogged on here last week, there was mounting speculation that VMware could be about to acquire Zimbra. Well yesterday (Tuesday 12th January) they did.
This is the 14th acquisition that VMware have made – that we are aware of; and as with Springsource in 2009 this seems to be an acquisition that is far away from the traditional space that VMware plays in.
In case you didn’t read our other post, Zimbra is an online/offline collaboration suite that competes with other PIM SaaS providers such as Google.
What is VMware going to do with Zimbra? A product that is completely unrelated to virtualisation with the exception of the Zimbra virtual appliance.
VMware have said they will continue to support the users mailboxes and continue to develop the suite, but they have also mentioned in the press release that they will be looking to optimise and integrate the product into their vCloud solution.
What they have made clear is that offering business critical core applications is a key area of their strategy, so I would have thought that reading between the lines there will be a raft of more acquisitions to follow as clearly email is not the only core application a business needs.
I guess one of the biggest challenges in this new direction that VMware seem to be embarking upon changing the mind set of organisations away from just a virtualisation platform, very much like Citrix had to do with Presentation Server.
Should be an interesting time ahead.