FrontBridge Buy to Boost Microsoft's Service Biz

by Alex Woodie

One doesn't normally view Microsoft as a services company. The software giant has been known to mock its competitors, specifically IBM, for mixing consulting services and hardware sales with software development. The company even blamed a recent reduction in Microsoft Business Solutions' net income on its strategy to move service contracts to partners. But that software-only focus, it would seem, is starting to change, and the planned acquisition of FrontBridge Technologies and its e-mail hosting business is a prime example.

Microsoft's acquisition of privately held FrontBridge Technologies has yet to be finalized, but it's hard to see anything standing it its way. FrontBridge's president and CEO, Steve Jillings, says the acquisition is "absolutely great" and represents an "incredible opportunity" for growing the business.

That business is providing full-service e-mail hosting--including antivirus, anti-spam, disaster recovery, policy enforcement, and regulatory compliance--to 3,100 businesses via eight data centers located around the world. FrontBridge manages the SMTP-based e-mail servers of some pretty well-known organizations, including AT&T, Sprint, and VeriSign.

While some might see the acquisition of FrontBridge conflicting with Microsoft's recent acquisition of Sybari, a developer of antivirus and anti-spam software that operates as a subsidiary of Microsoft, the software giant says that's not the case. "With the acquisitions of Sybari and FrontBridge, customers now have a choice of either an on-premise or hosted antivirus or anti-spam solution based on their preference," says David Thompson, corporate vice president of the Exchange Server product group at Microsoft. "Depending on their situation, customers tend to prefer one solution over another."

Microsoft has made its fortunes developing software that, in theory, is powerful and easy to use. In some cases, however, it would seem that even the world's best software is no match for the powerful forces working to reduce e-mail--the Internet's original "killer app"--into a noxious brew of spam, viruses, phishing schemes, and assorted malware. At least, this is what Microsoft's acquisition of an e-mail services firm would seem to indicate.

According to Thompson, it's unrealistic to ask overburdened IT professionals to also become experts on how to stop viruses and spam via in-house software. "I recently met with a leading manufacturer of audio, video, and information technology products which needed to employ 22 spam analysts just to keep up with the deluge of junk e-mail employees were receiving every day," Thompson says. "With the managed-services model, we believe this customer will be able to reassign those 22 people."

FrontBridge's Jillings sounds thrilled to be going to work for Microsoft. "By teaming up with Microsoft, we'll be able to draw upon Microsoft's large install base to reach more customers, take advantage of great technical experience and resources to grow our technology portfolio in ways that we've only dreamed of," he says.

Thompson says adding e-mail services via FrontBridge is a good match for Exchange Server, Microsoft's e-mail software. "We see FrontBridge's services as a perfect complement to Exchange. The FrontBridge team brings significant expertise in helping customers mitigate messaging risks before they ever reach the corporate firewall," he says.