VMware completes Zimbra integration

Stuart Corner
Wednesday, 11 August 2010 18:11

Business IT - Technology

VMware says it has completed the integration of email and collaboration products of former Yahoo! subsidiary, Zimbra, acquired earlier this year and that all Zimbra products are now available to VMware customers and partners.

VMware has also launched the Zimbra Collaboration Suite Appliance, billed as an enterprise-class email and collaboration solution delivered as a virtual appliance that runs on the VMware vSphere platform and that helps reduce the cost and complexity of infrastructure management, offering "dynamic provisioning and scalability, high availability, backup, and disaster recovery."

As a result, says VMware, "customers can improve service levels by reducing the impact of planned and unplanned hardware downtime. The Zimbra Appliance also features integrated security technologies including a firewall, anti-virus and anti-spam solutions."

Jim Morrisroe, Zimbra general manager, said: "The Zimbra Collaboration Suite Appliance delivers customers secure email with the assurance that their data is protected on our VMware vSphere virtualisation platform, and a collaboration solution that they can fully deploy in a matter of minutes – literally going from install to inbox in less than ten minutes."

VMware announced plans to acquire Zimbra in January from Yahoo! Yahoo! had purchased the email and collaboration vendor in 2007 for around $US350 million.

The goal was to further enhance Yahoo!'s "leadership position in Web mail," according to Brad Garlinghouse, senior vice president, communications and communities at Yahoo! The price paid by VMware was not disclosed. VMware closed the transaction in February.