Yahoo has announced that Satish Dharmaraj, who co-founded the open source e-mail services start-up Zimbra  that Yahoo purchased for $350 million in September 2007, will be leaving the Sunnyvale, California-based Web pioneer in March. Dharmaraj became the first high profile employee to depart Yahoo since it named former Autodesk Inc. executive chairman Carol Bartz as the new chief executive at the company last week, replacing interim chief executive and company co-founder Jerry Yang. Dharmaraj will continue to serve in an advisory role for the Zimbra team at Yahoo, the company said Wednesday, although it did not disclose where he will be going. First Major Departure Since Appointing New Chief Executive Bartz Last Week At the time of its purchase of Zimbra Yahoo was still adding jobs to its workforce, including over 200 added in 2007 from Zimbra and online advertising companies BlueLithium and Right Media. Just over a year after acquiring Zimbra, beleaguered Yahoo laid off 1,500 employees from its workforce of about 15,000 during a 2008 that saw company share prices plummet after an abandoned $47.5 billion hostile takeover attempt by Microsoft. Dharmaraj had seen a diminished role in the daily management of Yahoo's Zimbra division, according to a Wednesday report Kara Swisher of the Dow Jones-owned All Things Digital Web site. The Zimbra e-mail services team at Yahoo is headed by the previous president and chief technology officer of Zimbra, Scott Dietzen, who was expected to remain at Yahoo along with the remainder of the Zimbra team. Yahoo chose Dietzen to head the efforts during a reorganization in June 2008. "Satish Dharmaraj will be leaving Yahoo in March," Yahoo said in a statement Wednesday. "Satish is a valued member of the Yahoo team and will serve in an advisory role to Zimbra. He leaves behind a dedicated team who will continue to deliver open source, collaborative messaging software, and expand into new markets. Satish's contributions to Zimbra and Yahoo have been invaluable and we look forward to his continued support of the Zimbra project," Yahoo said. Yahoo To Loose Satish Dharmaraj, Co-Founder Of Zimbra E-mail Acquisition The methods developed by Zimbra have helped Yahoo bolster its Web-based e-mail program, which despite increasing challenges from Google's Gmail and other similar services, has remained the most-used online e-mail platform. A number of features based on Zimbra technology have made their way into Yahoo's e-mail service, and some of the applications developed by Zimbra have been widely expected to debut in future Web application services from Yahoo, as it looks to compete with online collaborative suites such as Google Apps, Zoho, and Microsoft's forthcoming release of Office. Based around AJAX Web development tools, Yahoo has sought to make some of Zimbra's techniques key parts of its strategy to push its services as a better option for third-party developers. Replacing Dharmaraj as the Zimbra group vice president will be Jim Morrisroe, one of the original members of Zimbra, who will report to Dietzen, Yahoo said Wednesday. Related Links :
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