Microsoft Renames FrontBridge Mail Services

Microsoft is re-branding FrontBridge hosted e-mail filtering, archiving, continuity, and encryption services as Exchange Hosted Services.

The company is positioning the hosted lineup as the "in-the-cloud" alternatives to its on-premise Antigen and Spam Manager offerings. Microsoft bought Sybari and its Antigen line just over a year ago and FrontBridge, Marina Del Rey, Calif., last August.

The four hosted services will go on Microsoft's volume licensing plans on April 1 and be licensed on a per-user basis, according to Eron Kelly, director of Exchange Hosted Services.

For example, hosted filtering, is available for a free 30 day trail, will be $1.75, estimated street price, per user per month. The hosted archiving will be $17.25 per user per month and will support an unlimited retention period and offers 3.6 gigabytes of storage per user, The continuity services, guaranteeing fast recovery from outages and a thirty-day rolling historical mail store, is $2.50 per user per month. Encryption is $1.90 per user per month.

The company, which bought FrontBridge last August, is moving towards quarterly updates, with the 5.3 release due in April with faster full-text archive index, optimized filtering, and admin center security enhancements, the company said

A full Exchange Hosting Services 6.X release is timed to coincide with the promised Exchange 12 wave, due late this year, or early 2007.

Interestingly, when Microsoft bought FrontBridge, the company's technology was only partly based on the Windows stack and retains some of its non-Windows heritage. The services should be fully aboard the Microsoft stack in the 6.X timeframe, said Filo D'Souza, group program manager for Exchange Hosted Services.