Zimbra - Clouds gather in an Azure sky?

Interesting moves in January with the announcement that VMware would acquire Zimbra. For those who don;t know Zimbra they are a credible alternative to Exchange Server, in my opinion not as rich, but if you're a business a darn site better than GoogleApps.

By combining Zimbra with the SpringSource technology looks to be a lot more than an extension of the ongoing virtualization spat it, looks like a move against Microsoft. Take a look at the blog post by VMware CTO Steve Herrod it has zero to do with virtualization.

Bringing together all the components necessary to compete with Windows Azure and Micorsoft Hosted Services.

From an ego standpoint you could understand it if they launched a vCloud service themselves, but if they really want to challenge/irritate Microsoft it would make a lot more sense to make this competing technology cheaply available to Azures true cloud competitors: Amazon, IBM, Salesforce.Com who have the customers now. Let's watch and see, no doubt we'll return to this one again.