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VMware Acquires Presentation Software Company SlideRocket

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 05:45:22 +0000

VMware, Inc. (NYSE:VMW) is acquiring SlideRocket, a presentation software company that has 300,000 users. SlideRocket has 20,000 customers and collaboration tools for multiple authors to use. SlideRocket will complement VMware’s acquisition of e-mail suite company Zimbra.

“SlideRocket is built for a new, cloud-centric way of working. Its intuitive, web-based interface allows users to easily assemble rich, dynamic presentations that help captivate an audience whether they’re in the conference room, on a conference call, or in a coffee shop. Individuals can quickly create slides that flow with dynamic data from sources like Google, Twitter, and Salesforce. Author’s charts and graphs are always up-to-date with real-time data from Google spreadsheets, display up to the moment financial information, tap into the instant flow of ideas on twitter, and intelligently assemble sales decks in a single click. People can work as teams to build presentations that take full advantage of the cloud, while analytics provide insight into how presentations are impacting your audience. Most importantly, all SlideRocket presentations are built so audiences can experience them on multiple devices, ranging from desktops to tablets, online or off,” stated VMware CTO Steve Herrod in a blog post.

Yahoo! Rumored To Be Selling Off Zimbra

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 03:42:33 +0000

According to sources with AllThingsD, Yahoo! has been considering selling off Zimbra. Zimbra is an open source e-mail company that Yahoo! bought for $350 million back in 2007. Yahoo! seems to be cutting loose a lot of their assets and properties on the open market including Zimbra. Another property Yahoo! is selling includes HotJobs.

As Yahoo! is preparing to launch a new $100 million marketing campaign, this is evidence that they are planning to slim their portfolio.

Rumor also has it that Yahoo! M&A exec Greg Mrva is responsible for selling the property. Before Yahoo! bought Zimbra, the open source e-mail web start-up was backed by Benchmark Capital, Redpoint Ventures, and Accel Partners. Zimbra founder and former CEO Satish Dharmaraj left Yahoo! left the company earlier this year to join Redpoint.

Redpoint Ventures Announces The Hiring Of Zimbra Co-Founder Satish Dharmaraj

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 00:03:16 +0000

Satish Dharmaraj is the founder of corporate e-mail software company Zimbra. Yahoo! acquired the company for $350 million in 2007. With that kind of money it does not come to any surprise that Dharmaraj would join a VC firm. Redpoint Ventures has announced that they have hired Dharmaraj as a partner of the company.

After many executives leave a company, they move on to a new venture or become an entrepreneur-in-residence at a VC firm, but Dharmaraj decided to become a direct employee. Satish left Yahoo! this past January. Some other Yahoo! alumni executives that joined VC firms include David Goldberg, Jeff Weiner, and Andrew Braccia. Weiner now is the President of LinkedIn.

Currently Zimbra has over 20 million paid users. Comcast helped Zimbra’s user base grow tremendously.

Some of the companies that Redpoint invested in includes Scribd, SocialVibe, Adap.tv, Entertonement, and Oodle.

[via BoomTown]

Satish Dharmaraj, Co-Founder Of Yahoo! Leaves Yahoo!

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 23:04:59 +0000

Satish Dharmaraj, co-founder of Zimbra will be leaving Yahoo! Zimbra is the open source e-mail startup company that Yahoo! acquired for $350 million. The good news is that Dharmaraj is leaving with Zimbra doing very well. Zimbra has about 20 million paid users. Many of these paid customers were provided by Zimbra’s partnership with Comcast.

Through the acquisition, Yahoo! created serveral new e-mail services based on Zimbra technology. Zimbra has desktop software that has message tags, aggregated accounts from other e-mail services, contact management, and calendar software. In other words, it is just like Microsoft Outlook. The advantage that Zimbra has over Outlook is that it uses AJAX so that it is able to navigate through e-mail without slowing down. Outlook has a tendency to slow down when there are thousands of messages and large attachments.

It is not yet known what Dharmaraj plans to do next. My guess is that he’ll go for another startup idea or look into retirement.

[via AllThingsD]

Yahoo! Acquires Zimbra For $350 Million: Gearing For Online Office Application Competition

Amit Chowdhry — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 21:56:54 +0000

What does Georgia Tech, Digg, and Mozilla.org have in common? According to Yodel Anecdotal: Yahoo’s company blog, the email and group calendaring system is all powered by Zimbra. And because why it is so “damn cool” as described by Yahoo!’s Brad Garlinghouse, the search engine just bought the open source email/calendaring company for $350 million in cash.

This acquisition comes at a time that Google is gearing to develop further online office suite applications and when Microsoft is supposedly developing and testing online versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint as well. Yahoo! is now on the bandwagon and will bring Yahoo! new customers and be able to benefit from the open-source community in terms of email software development.

The Zimbra Collaboration Suite 4.5 is the current release by Zimbra, but with the announcement of the acquisition, version 5.0 will not be delayed.

For those who are current Zimbra customers or want to learn more about how the acquisition, there is a Q&A available and Network Edition Trial on the Zimbra website.

The company raised $30.5 million over the course of three rounds of funding from Benchmark Partners, Redpoint Ventures, Accel Capital, Sumitomo Corporation, and Duff Ackerman & Goodrich according to TechCrunch.