Battle looks set to be joined in the security market, with Microsoft this month naming the release date and pricing details for its OneCare Live security solution.
Microsoft is also looking at delivering a small-to-medium business (SMB) version of its new subscription and web-based security product OneCare Live by the end of this year, IT Weekly can reveal. With OneCare Live currently targeted at consumers, and set to hit the market in June, one of the software giant’s senior execs said last week that an SMB solution would follow not far behind. According to Orlando Ayala, senior vice president of Microsoft’s Small and Midmarket Solutions & Partners group, the software giant will target the SMB space with a modified version of its all-in-one security offering within six months of the consumer release date.
“It’s very targeted right now for consumers, first, and then the next target will be small and medium businesses,” Ayala told a press roundtable at a recent Gulf Partner event in Dubai. “It is likely it will be a different SKU (stock-keeping unit), more [attuned] for business. It’s a little bit like the Enterprise version of Office. I think the SMB solution will come along in six months.”
A single Microsoft OneCare Live licence will allow users to install the product on up to three machines, Microsoft announced this month, claiming this will cover 98% of homes. The web-based software, which will include a personal firewall, anti-virus scanning, general PC tune-up utilities, and data backup and recovery tools, has been in beta since last November in the US.
On the same day Microsoft unveiled release details about OneCare security vendor Symantec officially took the wraps off its own integrated, web-based security-as-a-service solution, which is due to be released in September. Project “Genesis” was officially announced on February 7 but prior to that, Symantec CEO John Thompson had already confidently declared the company’s willingness to “duke it out” with Microsoft.With Genesis set to launch three months later than OneCare, Microsoft is claiming that Symantec’s solution will simply be playing catch-up.
Symantec is equally adamant that Genesis will eventually outstrip anything Microsoft can offer, although it does not – at present – have any details about a possible SMB version.“In terms of capability I think it would be easy for Symantec to do so,” Vikram Suri, country manager Southern Gulf and Levant, Symantec Middle East, told IT Weekly. “Both solutions are definitely going to raise consumer awareness. But Symantec’s new solution, I think, will continue to be top sellers,” he claimed. “If you look at our history we have been nearly 20 years in this business. Secondly, the Genesis offering will be far more comprehensive than OneCare.”
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