When Yahoo acquired Zimbra in September 2007, some Zimbra backers worried Yahoo would mismanage the open source email asset. Fast forward to the present, and some Zimbra proponents have gone from concern to outright panic over Microsoft’s bid to acquire Yahoo (and, by attachment, Zimbra).

Zimbra has both commercial and Open Source versions. The Open Source project is very interesting in that it has many features that people want and looks great. You can use Zimbra Desktop to gather mail from many different accounts including Zimbra Mail, Yahoo! Mail, Gmail, AOL, Outlook or any other work or personal email account using POP or IMAP.

This article shows how you can install the Zimbra Desktop email client on an Ubuntu 8.04 LTS (Hardy Heron) desktop. Zimbra Desktop is a full-fledged replacement for email clients such as Outlook or Evolution, offering email, contacts, calendar, documents, tasks, etc. You can use it in conjunction with the Zimbra Collaboration Suite (ZCS) or any other email account that supports POP3 or IMAP.

VMware’s one year old, Zimbra saw its latest version, Zimbra.7 being unveiled on Monday last. VMware had acquired Zimbra from Yahoo January last year as it did not quite get the leverage the software required with Yahoo’s non-PR attitude.

Zimbra, one of the best-known providers of open source email, may soon have a new owner. Rumors are swirling that Yahoo plans to sell Zimbra to VMware. If true, here are the implications for Zimbra business partners.

It’s been less than a month since VMware officially acquired Zimbra -- the open source email platform -- from Yahoo. But VMware isn’t standing still. Jim Morrisroe, VP and GM of VMware’s Zimbra division, says the company is preparing software appliances that combine virtualization with Zimbra. They should arrive by Q2 2010. Here are the details and the implications.

Zimbra Appliance created by SUSE Studio tools and contains openSUSE JeOS with Zimbra and any dependencies packages.

Zimbra Appliance will make an installation process lot easier than manually installing package and make changes to some configuration files.

The Zimbra Collaboration Suite Open Source Edition is a next generation collaboration solution.

VMware is poised Tuesday to further redefine its cloud strategy by buying Yahoo's Zimbra open source messaging business in order to expand its stake in the platform-as-a-service market. Zimbra, bought by Yahoo in 2007 for $350 million, is an open source messaging platform popular on the Linux and Mac OS platforms and with universities and service providers.