So Yahoo’s (NSDQ: YHOO) recent acquisition of e-mail and communication suite Zimbra is making some people scratch their heads: they are skeptical about Yahoo’s capacity to serve enterprise customers and suspicious about Yahoo’s plans for the Zimbra, as this PCWorld story documents. Satish Dharmaraj, Zimbra’s co-founder and CEO, tried to allay some of these fears: Yahoo will not dismantle Zimbra to boost Yahoo Mail. “If Yahoo wanted the people and the technology to bolster the Yahoo consumer mail group, $350 million is a lot to pay,” Dharmaraj said. “We’re going to be kept whole as a business unit and we’ll execute on our current strategy,” he added.

Meanwhile, Doug Anmuth, the Lehman Brothers analyst who cover Yahoo, came out with a research note this Friday, and tackles the allure of online SMB apps for the online companies like Yahoo, Google (NSDQ: GOOG) and others. Some numbers and conclusions from him:
—We believe Google Apps could generate $400 million in revenue in 2010. However, we believe there could be considerable upside based on Google’s ability to penetrate larger enterprise customers.
—We also believe that greater enterprise adoption of Google Apps, for example, likely creates a halo effect around Google’s properties overall, thereby driving more usage of and greater loyalty toward the core search product.
—First, we believe Zimbra automatically strengthens Yahoo!’s capabilities in the enterprise email market, and potentially sets the stage for a future launch of office productivity tools.
—Second, we believe Yahoo! is likely to incorporate some of Zimbra’s features into Yahoo!’s existing communications suite, including email, IM, and calendars.
—With Yahoo!, we believe Zimbra can accelerate its market penetration as Yahoo! brings additional credibility to its product suite and it is likely to offer hosting services driven by Yahoo!’s scale.