--Paul Maritz, former Microsoft Vice President (not VM_Bware CEO)
"Microsoft [is] sticking the knife deeper into the anti-virus businesses," Oiaohm told us this morning while pointing to this article.
In its "Partner SMB Community" blog, Microsoft has announced that, in early October, the Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) anti-virus suite will become available to small businesses with up to 10 Windows PCs free-of-charge. As MSE has so far been intended for non-commercial use only, the main choice for Microsoft corporate customers has been Forefront Security.
Small business is a huge market for the anti-malware business. That’s where all kinds of operations cannot afford to hire their own IT and depend on third parties to keep their IT running. If M$ is giving it away for $0 how will Symantec etc. stay alive? M$ was already giving it away for $0 to consumers.
Comments
twitter
2010-09-25 00:48:59
This SME snake oil may be a short time sales spif to get small business on expensive "software assurance" subscription plans and to sell Vista 7. I can imagine the sales guy saying, "Buy a ten pack, it's cheaper and we'll throw in updates and anti-virus for free." Or it might be the beginning of a real move into more "profit center" to make up for lagging OS sales. The answer is to get rid of Windows.