January 20, 2009

Yat Siu sells Outblaze Messaging to IBM

Congratulations (恭喜恭喜) to Yat Siu for successfully selling Outblaze's email messaging service to the Big Blue, IBM! Read the official press announcement.

Outblaze's 40 million email accounts and private label email software will help boost Lotus Live, IBM's social networking and online collaboration platform. I believe this is the evolution of the once pervasive (and forward-thinking) Lotus Notes.

Yat will retain the Outblaze brand and the remaining company assets, which include social media and other online community building tools. A few words from the serial entrepreneur, "We are very excited about the deal with IBM, in which IBM will purchase Outblaze's e-mail business. IBM has the vision, network, and capability to take the business to previously unattainable heights. The transaction has strategic relevance for both companies because Outblaze and IBM will form a partnership to continue servicing the messaging needs of our customers. This in turn will allow Outblaze to dedicate more of our efforts to areas beyond messaging, including social media as well as new web and media development".

As a pro-active corporate member of the internet community in Hong Kong, apart from training many engineers who've gone on to start their own businesses, Outblaze has been a faithful long-term sponsor of Web Wednesday and Barcamp Hong Kong. We thank them for their support!

Yat was also one of Web Wednesday's first guest speakers, back in November 2007.

2 comments:

Winson Lai said...

Congratulations!

As an ex-Outblazer, I'm glad to know that Outblaze keeps on growing throughout the years.

Anonymous said...

This is great news for Hong Kong, I guess this means there is hope for Hong Kong Internet Companies afterall, who'se next?