Microsoft sets e-mail hygiene lineup, pricing

Microsoft Tuesday offered free trial versions of its forthcoming anti-virus and anti-spam software for e-mail that it obtained last year when it acquired Sybari Software.

The company introduced its first Microsoft versions and the licensing terms for its Antigen e-mail hygiene software, and said the finished products would ship July 1.

The products are: Antigen for Exchange, which provides anti-virus capabilities; Antigen for SMTP Gateways, which provides anti-virus and content filtering for Windows Server 2000 and 2003 SMTP gateways; Antigen Spam Manager, which provides anti-spam capabilities; and Antigen Enterprise Manager, a centralized management console for the Antigen lineup.

All the software supports Exchange 2000 and 2003.

Microsoft is adding its own virus-scanning engine to Antigen for Exchange, which is based on the GeCad technology it acquired in 2003. Antigen for Exchange also supports engines from CA, Norman Data Defense, Sophos, MailFilters, VirusBuster, AhnLab, Authentium and Kaspersky Labs.

In addition, Microsoft has added clustering support, new signature updates that are digitally signed by Microsoft, and management features to support the Antigen lineup.

“What has been nice is the reporting and enterprise management features they have added,” says Mark Longwell, a senior software architect for the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, and a long-time user of the former Sybari products.

“We are asked for statistics on everything including anti-virus and spam, for compliance, sometimes it is an executive wanting to check on our investment. We have a significant investment in protecting our e-mail system.”

Longwell said previous to the new management tools being added to the platform that collecting that statistical data was a labor-intensive process.

“I hope Microsoft continues the good track record that Sybari had and it looks like they are so far,” Longwell says.

Microsoft also is releasing an Antigen management pack for its monitoring software Operation Manager 2005. The pack will provide alerts and health monitoring services across the Antigen software. And Microsoft will bundle Antigen for Exchange, SMTP Gateways and Spam Manager into a single offering called the Antigen Messaging Security Suite.

Microsoft has Antigen products for SharePoint and Instant Messaging, but those will remain Sybari-branded products until new versions are released in the first half of 2007, according to company officials. Microsoft said at the time of the acquisition that Sybari’s line of Unix and Linux products would be discontinued.

The Antigen family of software is part of Microsoft’s push to secure it products from the server to the client desktop. Later this year it is expected to release Microsoft Client Protection, which is designed to protect desktops, laptops and basic Windows file servers from viruses, spyware and other malware, including rootkits.

Antigen for Exchange is priced starting at $10.50 per user per year for 250 users or less. Antigen SMTP Gateways and Spam Manager are each priced at $7.50 per user per year. The Messaging Security Suite is priced at $14.50 per user per year. The licenses will be offered on a subscription basis.