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VMware Adds Zimbra: The Q&A
- plinkplonk 17y agoThey spent 362 million $ on Spring Source (WTF!) and a 100 million $ on ZImbra (double WTF!). That's enough to buy a 100 early stage startups (and a chance of getting something really innovative). As it is it sounds like a typical MB droid play.
- hello_moto 17y agoDifferent culture, different market I would guess. SpringSource (platform) and Zimbra are in the enterprise world. Also keep in mind that both SS and Zimbra have enterprise customers. Startups these days aren't producing CRM, ERP, HRM, and CMS... and most startups aren't platform providers.
- sogrady 17y agoDisclosure: I wrote the linked piece. That said, I think the above argument works if you're looking at Zimbra purely as an acquisition of technology. My view, as might be gathered, is that this - like a lot of enterprise acquisitions - is as much or more about the business that Zimbra was doing. Where business reads as: the account inroads they've made in small hosts and service providers everywhere; the kind of accounts that are crucial to VMware's future. Whether it justifies the valuation is a question of revenues, which we don't have a good sense of, but if this helps advance VMware's larger ambitions it's certainly worth a significant multiple of an early stage startup.
- michaelneale 17y agoI think Yahoo paid quite a bit more for Zimbra in the first place, so looking at only that for valuation, that would seem a good discount for VMWare. But yes, the numbers are unreal seeming !
- sogrady 17y agoThe number we know is the original VMware valuation, which was ~$350M. The number we don't is the price this time around, because financial terms weren't disclosed. It seems safe to assume, however, that VMware is paying less, and AllThingsD's reporting validates that.
- sogrady 17y agoSorry, that should read "the original Yahoo valuation..."
- michaelneale 17y agoYes, I knew what you meant ;) I think an open source exchange killer was far more up the list of priorities when Yahoo bought it, than it would be today. (Exchange is still everywhere, but people don't seem to mind nor talk about it - with Lotus, and Google "gone google" in the market - maybe people view it as acceptable competition now?)