Service provider Verio has added VMware Zimbra collaboration to its portfolio of hosted messaging solutions for the company’s OEM and viaVerio reseller partners.

In the press release, Verio boasted when customers purchase Zimbra services from Verio, either as a standalone product or as part of a hosting package, they get a truly business-class solution.

To wit, here’s what Steve Renda, Verio senior vice president of Global Sales and Marketing, had to say in the press release:

The branding options Renda referred to include the ability for Verio partners to white-label Zimbra deployments with their own logos. And partners also have the opportunity to develop their own solutions built on Zimbra as a platform thanks to the so-called Zimbra Zimlets — tools to integrate third-party apps into the suite.

Microsoft Office 365 and Google Apps may be the most buzzed-about cloud options for messaging out there, but hosted service providers seem to be finding more beneficial partnerships for products such as VMware Zimbra as seen here, Open-Xchange and similar. We’ll be tracking Zimbra and the hosted e-mail market at large closely, so stay tuned.