Microsoft Aims To Be At 'Forefront' Of Security

Four years ago, Microsoft's Windows empire was threatened by the spate of viruses and worms clogging networks, infecting desktops and shutting down servers. The crisis impacted first-quarter earnings in 2003 because it "diverted the focus of our customers, our sales force and our channel away from closing new deals," then-CFO John Connors said.

Microsoft pledged to clean up its act and created a security-focused Windows XP Service Pack 2 that addressed some of those concerns.

Now Microsoft is poised to make lemonade out of lemons. At Tech Ed 2006 last week, even as it announced more than 10 patches to fix critical vulnerabilities in SP2, Microsoft Senior Vice President of Server and Tools Business Bob Muglia kicked off a broad marketing campaign and the Forefront brand name for its line of corporate security products.

"Forefront will become a complete set of security products from Microsoft, updating the capabilities that we have with Antigen today, protecting Exchange, protecting SharePoint, but then also adding client-side protection," Muglia said.

It's not clear how the market will respond. Microsoft has talked about its corporate security plans for years, but none of the Forefront products—aside from the ISA firewall—have shipped yet.

Microsoft's first corporate antivirus product, Antigen for Exchange—which will become Forefront Security for Exchange Server in its next release—becomes available July 1.

ISA 2006, an upgrade of Microsoft's existing firewall, won't ship until until September. And Forefront Client Security, formerly known as Microsoft Client Protection for desktop security, won't go into beta testing until the fourth quarter and won't ship until 2007.

There are some partners that prefer working with best-of-breed products from security ISVs such as Symantec, McAfee, Trend Micro and don't trust Microsoft on this front.

"Microsoft just can't be everything to everybody. Until they establish their reputation as a premier security vendor, we will stay the course with our established security partners," said Darrel Bowman, CEO of AppTech, Tacoma, Wash.

Still, some Microsoft solution providers think Forefront will become a significant profit center for the software company and its channel over time.

"Microsoft has a great advantage over the competition when it comes to a product like this, since who knows their software better than they do? I'm sure Symantec and the others really aren't looking forward to competing with Microsoft in this area," said Todd Swank, vice president of marketing at Nor-Tech, a Microsoft solution provider and system builder in Burnsville, Minn. Microsoft's ability to tightly integrate Forefront antivirus, desktop and edge security products with its System Center management products is another major advantage, Forrester Research analysts said.

They also point out that Microsoft's ease-of-use features, such as wizards and point-and-click templates, make it easy for nonsecurity pros to deploy security products. In addition, Forrester analysts said, Microsoft will win over some customers by making its products very task-oriented and specific to various environments such as Exchange, SharePoint and mobile devices.

Bundling those products in a suite and making Forefront available as part of its planned Enterprise Client Access Licenses also gives Microsoft a leg up against Symantec, McAfee and Trend Micro, Forrester analysts said.

Those ISVs also have security product suites, but Microsoft invented the concept and was careful to build, buy and integrate only the core security features that need to exist at the desktop, server and gateway to enable an easy-to-use utility solution, said Mike Riley, vice president of corporate strategy at Network Engines, a Microsoft OEM partner in Canton, Mass.

"This is where Microsoft will shine. This is exactly what they did in the days of word processing, spreadsheets, drawing packages, e-mail clients/servers and databases that resulted in Office," Riley said. "It met most of the needs of users, was inexpensive relative to the traditional discrete applications, was easy to use. It just worked. Microsoft literally destroyed the traditional single-product vendors."

Microsoft's product strategy may be sound, but customers need partners and consultants to fully secure the corporate infrastructure, said an executive at Avanade, Microsoft's jointly owned venture with Accenture.

"If Forefront helps us build secure solutions for our customers, everyone wins," said Tyson Hartman, CTO of Avanade Americas, during an interview at Tech Ed. "But improving security isn't a function of tools and products alone. It requires people and process changes as well."

KEVIN MCLAUGHLIN contributed to this story.