After last week, Yahoo announced the acquisition of BuzzTracker, today the Web giant announced a new deal. Jerry Yang, chief executive officer, Yahoo, said the company has signed a deal to acquire Zimbra, a company that provides NEXT generation e-mail services and collaboration software.

Zimbra’s offer includes an AJAX-based e-mail, which integrates calendar and contact management features.

According to Chang Yahoo will use its newly acquired platform in order to strengthen and extend its position in e-mail services market.  

“Our industry-leading communications products, including Yahoo! Mail, are critical to the

Future growth and success of Yahoo!,” said Jerry Yang, chief executive officer, Yahoo! Inc. “Zimbra’s tremendous talent and innovative technology will help to extend our core Mail offerings, further strengthening our strong leadership position in this space. Additionally, Zimbra’s successful relationships with large ISPs are key as we expand our worldwide partner NETWORK and continue to focus on our commitment to being the partner of choice.”

Earlier this year Zimbra was one of the companies selected by Comcast to build its SmartZone service,  

a central location where the customer are able to send and receive email, check voicemail online, send instant messages and manage a new address book.

Last week Yahoo announced the alpha version of a new social networking project, called Yahoo Mash and maybe Zimbra’s acquisition will allow Yahoo to develop new services for its latest project.

Zimbra is offering also to its user the possibility to creat mash-ups called Zimlets that tie in valuable Web services to e-mail.

“With Yahoo’s ad and content network, the possibilities for Zimlets and other applications are endless.” said Satish Dharmaraj, Zimbra co-founder and CEO. According to Yahoo the price paid for Zimbra was $350 million.

Zimbra will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Yahoo and Satish Dharmaraj will continue to lead the Zimbra team based in Yahoo’s Sunnyvale headquarters.  He will report to Brad Garlinghouse, senior vice president, communications and communities.