• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, January 12, 2010

VMware, a provider of so-called "virtualization" software, has agreed to acquire Web mail client Zimbra from Yahoo. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Yahoo paid $350 million for Zimbra less than three years ago, but is presently engaged in a broad effort to focus its strategic vision and unload non-core assets. The company's top mergers and acquisitions executive Greg Mrva had reportedly been shopping Zimbra around for months.

Backed by Benchmark Capital, Redpoint Ventures and Accel Partners, Zimbra's main business has been to provide clients -- including Comcast and a myriad of ISPs and colleges -- with white-label email software capabilities.

Under the terms of the agreement, VMware will purchase all Zimbra technology and intellectual property, while Yahoo will have the right to continue to use the Zimbra technology in its communications services, including Yahoo Mail and Yahoo Calendar.

VMware executives say the acquisition is part of their efforts to simplify IT services, along with datacenter, desktop, and application development.

"We expect more organizations, especially small and medium-size businesses, to increasingly buy core IT solutions that deliver cloud-like simplicity in end-user and operational experience," said Brian Byun, vice president and general manager of Cloud Services at VMware.

According to VMware, the number of mailboxes under Zimbra's purview grew 86% in 2009 -- to some 55 million -- and 165% among small and medium business customers in particular.

VMware plans to support existing Zimbra products and open-source efforts while improving Zimbra products for vSphere-based cloud infrastructure, alongside Microsoft, IBM and other messaging and collaboration solutions.

"With this acquisition, we will extend our focus into email and collaboration, one of the core services -- along with areas such as file and print services and identity management -- that IT departments universally provide to their users," Steve Herrod, VMware's chief technology officer, wrote in a blog post on Tuesday.

VMware is a recognized leader in the field of virtualization -- in which single computers run several operating systems, which allows them to conduct two to three times as many operations as a machine running one OS.

According to VMware, the acquisition is expected to close in the first calendar quarter of 2010.