Today Microsoft disclosed that it planned to acquire Sybian Software, adding a second anti-virus software company to its list of assets.

The New York Times reports:

Microsoft said on Tuesday that it planned to acquire Sybari Software, which makes programs aimed at protecting business computer networks from viruses, worms and other threats.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Sybari, which is privately held, had been scheduled to make an initial public offering this week. The offering, which has been called off, valued Sybari at up to $186 million.

In 2003, Microsoft acquired Romanian anti-virus firm GeCad, but has yet to release a commercial product based on it. Still, Microsoft has leveraged their technology into protecting their customers.

Markezich: For example, our acquisition of GeCAD helped us to deliver cleaner tools to help customers recover after the Blaster, MyDoom, Sasser and Download.Ject infections. It also helped us to provide the Microsoft Malicious Software Removal Tool to more than 133 million PCs.

8 months ago, Microsoft began testing the Sybian solutions internally. They were so impressed, they purchased the company.

PressPass: How did these factors lead you to Sybari?

Markezich: About a year ago we conducted a major analysis of leading gateway antivirus products. We set up a controlled lab environment that fully matched the Microsoft production environment in number of servers, simulated traffic and so on. We tested on the basis of both performance and functionality. Could a product maintain its virus-catching performance even under the most stressful loads? Could it perform under unexpected conditions, such as when a computer reboots because of maintenance updates? Did the solution support all the messaging encoding it was likely to encounter? Did it integrate natively with Exchange Server, eliminating the need for dedicated virus scanning computers?

Perhaps the key issue from a management perspective was, did the solution support multiple scanning engines? That's absolutely crucial because, if you depend on a single scanning engine and it misses the infection or is taken down by it, you're sunk. With multiple engines all working through a single scanning solution, you get faster response, more certain response, and more reliable operation during an actual threat.

PressPass: And how did Sybari measure up?

Markezich: On all of these measures, Sybari was far and away above anything else we looked at. We went into production with Sybari on our communication and collaboration environment in May 2004 and it immediately became an integral part of our messaging hygiene defense. We have better protection at lower cost than we had before. We strip harmful attachments without losing mail. We scan Zip files. We consolidated the number of our Internet gateways from 18 to 10 for a tremendous reduction in TCO. We have full protection even during peak traffic.

PressPass: Your bottom-line evaluation of Sybari?

Markezich: We haven't had a single e-mail related infection since adopting Sybari. Our vision for security in workplace collaboration is that it requires layered defenses, tight integration with the rest of the infrastructure, and protection from the latest threats. Sybari met our needs on all of these criteria.

Posted by Michael at February 9, 2005 12:12 AM