Microsoft has agreed
to acquire FrontBridge
Technologies for an undisclosed sum. FrontBridge sells a hosted service that
offers email security, regulatory compliance and guaranteed availability.
Microsoft will offer the services as an added outsourced security technology
to Exchange users. The company also expects that regulatory requirements will
drive the need for email archiving services.
For Exchange users with a single server, Frontbridge delivers increased
system uptime and continuity by offering access to email through a web-based
system during outages or maintenance.
"We see FrontBridge's services as a perfect complement to Exchange. The
FrontBridge team brings significant expertise in helping customers mitigate
messaging risks before they ever reach the corporate firewall," said Dave
Thompson, corporate vice president of the Exchange Server Group at Microsoft.
Most industry players see the move as a coming of age for managed services.
"This demonstrates a clear validation of the managed email security market and
we believe this will accelerate the adoption of such services," said John
Cheney, chief executive at
Blackspider
Technologies.
But others see something of a mismatch between Microsoft and the provision of
secure services.
Scott Petri, founder of managed security services firm
Postini, said: "This is
typical of Microsoft in buying a second, third or fourth player in a market.
"Postini is bigger and more profitable [than FrontBridge] and a lot of
companies cannot trust Microsoft as a security provider."
Symantec, which
recently bought two email security companies,
Brightmail and
TurnTide, seems unworried
by the purchase.
"While FrontBridge sells hosted email security, compliance and continuity
solutions, it does so only as a hosted service and by leveraging antivirus
solutions from other vendors. The hosted service market is a very small segment
of the overall security market."
Microsoft acquired antivirus and anti-spam vendor
Sybari in February, but the two deals do not overlap,
according to the company.
Although both acquisitions provide Microsoft with a spam and virus filtering
product, Sybari's software runs on a local server while
FrontBridge sells a hosted offering.
California-based FrontBridge has 3,100 customers. Terms of the transaction
were not disclosed.
Additional reporting by Ken Young.
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