14 October 2008

Patience is a virtue - Zimbra finally gets its Yahoo! debut

A little over a year ago Yahoo! acquired open-source messaging company Zimbra for a whopping $350 million, but it is only now starting to launch products based on Zimbra's technology. After a decade Yahoo! has decided to update its calendar service and it is using Zimbra to power it.

The new Yahoo! calendar is built on the Zimbra platform, which uses Ajax functionality in its online calendars and iCalendar and CalDAV3 standards. What does all this mean I hear you cry? This new design will make Yahoo! calendar interoperable with other online calendar services, including those from Mozilla, Apple, Microsoft, Time Warner's AOL and Google.

So what does the future hold? When Yahoo! acquired Zimbra, many in the industry saw it as a way for Yahoo! to compete with Google Apps, what with its open APIs that enable Zimbra to be connected to just about everything. What Yahoo! is aiming to create is a more open platform, using APIs and mashups across multiple Yahoo! properties (e.g. Yahoo! Maps).

According to Yahoo! executive Brad Garlinghouse this move signals the start of "great opportunities to incorporate some of Zimbra's best- of- breed features into Yahoo!'s industry leading communications products". However, in the future it is not just Yahoo's comms products that will benefit, it's basically anything with an API - and Yahoo! has a lot of API's, including for Y! Mail.

Here at bigmouthmedia we're left wondering if this new development is merely an indicator of things to come - and whether there are many more Zimbra-based projects in Yahoo!'s future.

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