Q&A: Microsoft Announces Plans to Acquire FrontBridge Technologies, Inc., a Leading Provider of Secure Managed Messaging Services

Q&A: Microsoft Announces Plans to Acquire FrontBridge Technologies, Inc., a Leading Provider of Secure Managed Messaging Services "PressPass: How does the acquisition of FrontBridge relate to the recent acquisition of Sybari technologies?
Thompson: The acquisitions of both Sybari and FrontBridge demonstrate Microsoft’s commitment to bringing greater security to a customers’ e-mail environment, and also ensuring customers have a choice in terms of how these solutions are delivered. With the acquisitions of Sybari and FrontBridge, customers now have a choice of either an on premise or hosted anti-virus or anti-spam solution based on their preference. Depending on their situation, customers tend to prefer one solution over another. For example, customers that already have AV/AS technical expertise, and wish to maintain those skills in-house, can choose to run Sybari’s Antigen and Advanced Spam Manager products on premise. Other customers may choose to outsource this expertise to a third party to reduce overall costs, and will likely opt for FrontBridge managed services. Therefore, we would leave it to customers to decide which solution they feel is most optimal to protect them from malicious software, based on their business requirements.
In addition to the hosted AV/AS service, FrontBridge also offers hosted services in the areas of compliance and disaster recovery. Message Archive intercepts customers' electronic communications, archives and indexes them for immediate monitoring, and provides search and retrieval capabilities. Active Message Continuity and Disaster Recovery provides a back-up messaging system that can be called into action at anytime in the event of an emergency, helping to assure your company will never lose an e-mail, even if your corporate network and e-mail servers are unavailable."