Officials at Symantec and McAfee say they’re ready to face Microsoft in the consumer antivirus market now that its OneCare Live product has been given a June shipping date in the U.S.
However, it won’t come north until next year, giving Canadian resellers of competing products more time to hone their strategies.
“We’ve been preparing for this entry for a long time,” said David Roberts, McAfee’s senior vice-president of North American channels.
“We’ll go head to head with them,” he said, adding that McAfee will “make sure our margin enhancement programs give our resellers an advantage.”
Symantec countered the Microsoft news by announcing its so-called Genesis content protection software, which will work with its Norton Internet Security suite to screen malware, will be released in the fall. No price was announced.
“Symantec has some inherent advantages in the breadth and depth of our product line,” said Tom Powledge, its director of consumer product management.
Last week Microsoft announced it will launch the OneCare Live consumer antivirus, antispam and firewall application in June.
According to a spokesman for the company, the US$49.95 software, to be sold through the channel. will be sold first in the U.S. before going to other markets. It’s still in beta and features aren’t finalized.
However, Microsoft also said will launch two corporate content protection applications in both countries in the second half of the year, Microsoft Client Protection for desktops and Antigen for Microsoft e-mail file and print servers. The company released betas of both products last week.
The moves are part of the company’s long-awaited charge into the antispyware and antivirus markets, capitalizing on the acquisitions of Sybari Software, Giant Company Software and GeCAD Software over the past two years. Last week Microsoft announced several products now in beta will be ready for sale in the second half of the year.
An industry analyst says Microsoft may have it easy to sell to consumers and small businesses but will have to fight to get into medium and enterprise accounts.
Joe Greene, vice-president of IT security research for IDC Canada, agreed somewhat. “In the medium and large marketplace (Microsoft) are going to have a fight,” he said. “In Canada (these customers) tend to be owned by Symantec and McAfee, and to a degree CA and Trend Micro.”
“Some of our recent research suggests 90 per cent of medium and large organizations are satisfied with their current (antivirus) suppliers and aren’t going to be moving.”
On the other hand, he added, the small business marketplace is “fairly wide open because there are a large number of firms that have yet to embrace antispyware and antispam” software.
Small firms buy on price, not features and functionality, he added.
Microsoft Client Protection, a centrally deployable suite of antivirus and antispyware applications, will be sold through the company’s extensive partner network, said Derick Wong, Microsoft Canada’s senior security product manager.
Microsoft Antigen, based on the Sybari application that includes several antivirus scanning engines, will come with a Microsoft-designed AV engine as well. It will come in versions for Exchange, SharePoint and SMTP servers as well as file and print servers, as well as a spam manager and enterprise manager.
“We’re arming our partners with more and better tools to help their customers,” said Wong.
“2006 is going to be the culmination of our security push.”
While the one-year delay in bringing One Care Live here means Canadian resellers of competing products from Symantec, McAfee, CA, Panda Software, BitDefender and Trend Micro will get a temporary respite from facing Microsoft’s marketing budget, a spokesman for McAfee Canada isn’t worried.
“It’s going to have an impact on our consumer space,” acknowledged Jack Sebbag, the company’s Canadian general manager, “but having said that we have a whole host of other technologies.
To keep VARs from worrying about the Microsoft consumer desktop threat McAfee has been trying to get its partners to concentrate on what he called more advanced technologies for businesses such as network policy enforcement and intrusion protection, he said.
McAfee’s edge is having products medium and enterprise-sized companies want, said Sebbag. Enterprises are looking for a multi-layered network security approach, he said, which Microsoft doesn’t have.
“We’re very comfortable” with the strategy, he said. “We don’t believe we’re going to lose very much traction.”
