Zimbra's founder and CEO leaves Yahoo
Satish Dharmaraj, co-founder and CEO of open-source Zimbra, which sold for $350 million to Yahoo, is leaving Yahoo, as VentureBeat reports.
Though Zimbra president and CTO, Scott Dietzen, has been running day-to-day operations in Dharmaraj's place for some time, it's not a great time for Dharmaraj to leave Yahoo, as Boomtown suggests. Zimbra was always the sum of many important parts, but Dharmaraj helped to steer the company with very few visible flaws in execution. Yahoo needs that sort of leadership to rebuild its brand and expand its enterprise offerings from its Zimbra beachhead.
So, too bad for Yahoo, but I'm sure Dharmaraj will find his way to another successful startup. He's an exceptional entrepreneur. Perhaps it was hoping too much to expect him to stay at Yahoo or anywhere else for long.
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
