Yahoo announced their intent to buy Zimbra, provider of web-based integrated e-mail, calendar, documents, and VoIp, for $350M. This is big news. Yahoo has not yet announced its plans for Zimbra. Given that Zimbra has a on-line (web-based) version as well as a off-line and a mobile offering, this could become a serious contendor for e-mail/calendar application for the enterprise. Zimbra is already gaining grounds in Small Medium Market.

I have to admit that I a surprised, that Google did not grab them, given their focus on Applications. This would have been a good addition, especially the fact the user interface for Gmail is very limited.

More on this later.