Zimbra, darling of the Web 2.0 collaboration suites, is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Yahoo. It was probably just a matter of time until the company was snapped up by a larger fish; previous speculation had been leaning toward Red Hat.

Blog commentary so far is talking the deal up, suggesting that it may mean a Yahoo play for Google's Apps market, but what Yahoo really needed to compete there are the office apps, not the e-mail, which they are arguably already doing better than Gmail. An integration suite could be a start, but it seems both late and a bit mis-directed. A more likely target might be Microsoft, actually-Zimbra's real strengths seem balanced more to compete with Exchange than with Google Apps.

If there is a compelling reason behind the purchase, I think it's more likely to be the acquisition of the expertise behind what sounds like a technically sweet solution to one of the major obstacles for all SaaS vendors, off-line application integration. Yahoo Mail off-line would be a coup.