• Illustration: FrontBridge Architecture

Microsoft intends to acquire FrontBridge Technologies, an established provider of security, compliance, and availability services for corporate and hosted Internet mail and instant messaging (IM) systems. Although Microsoft plans to further address spam, viruses, regulatory compliance, and availability in upcoming releases of its Exchange e-mail server, it is acquiring FrontBridge so that it can also offer these functions as a hosted service to organizations that want to use Exchange or other e-mail systems internally, but that don't have the expertise or manpower to deal with these challenges.

What Does FrontBridge Do?

FrontBridge (formerly named Big Fish Communications) operates eight data centers around the world that provide inbound and outbound messaging-related services to corporate customers and hosted e-mail providers. (For a diagram of the main components, see the illustration "FrontBridge Architecture".) FrontBridge provides filters and data stores that perform the following services:

Antivirus. FrontBridge filters incoming and outgoing SMTP e-mail messages for viruses using multiple scanning technologies. It can also block specific kinds of file attachments.

Antispam. Using multiple technologies, FrontBridge filters incoming mail for spam before forwarding the messages to the customer's e-mail servers. It claims a very low incidence of blocking legitimate e-mail—less than one for every 250,000 e-mails received.

Content and recipient inspection. FrontBridge can filter outbound messages for specific keywords, phrases, attachment types, and recipient names or domains that violate customer policies, and return blocked messages to the sender.

Message archive and retention. Working in conjunction with the customer's internal Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) e-mail and IM servers, FrontBridge can keep copies of all messages and archive and index them for monitoring, search, and retrieval.

Disaster recovery. FrontBridge can spool inbound SMTP e-mail so that messages are never rejected when the customer's e-mail servers are down. Furthermore, it can keep up to 30 days' worth of copies of all mail (both inbound and internal) and give users secure Web access to mail services even if their internal servers are down or destroyed.

Message security. FrontBridge offers message encryption services based on a technology called Identity-Based Encryption (IBE) developed by Voltage Security. FrontBridge claims that IBE eliminates the need for public key infrastructure (PKI) and digital certificates, and instead uses a common identity, such as an e-mail address, as the public key. Senders and recipients can use Outlook, Outlook Express, Outlook Web Access, Hotmail, and Yahoo! Mail as e-mail clients, but they require installation of special IBE extensions.

Together, these services not only reduce annoyances and risks but also help organizations comply with regulations requiring e-mail archiving, outbound inspection, and encryption, such as HIPAA, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, SEC Rule 17a-4, NASD Rule 3010, and Sarbanes-Oxley.

FrontBridge service-level agreements stipulate 99.999% availability through its distributed, fault-tolerant data center architecture, and the company claims that it has never had a service outage since 1999. Although the FrontBridge services work well with Exchange, they work equally well with most other SMTP-compliant e-mail systems.

Why Is Microsoft Acquiring FrontBridge?

For years, Microsoft has enhanced Exchange and partnered with security partners such as McAfee, Symantec, and Trend Micro to make it possible for customers to get most of these functions through Exchange and third-party add-ons. Most recently, Microsoft purchased Exchange antivirus vendor Sybari and announced plans for further security enhancements with Exchange 2003 SP2 (expected in the second half of 2005) and the next major upgrade, code-named Exchange 12 and due in the second half of 2006.

However, as e-mail has grown more mission-critical, many customers don't have the resources to keep their e-mail systems secure and compliant with internal and government-mandated policies, and have therefore turned to outsourcing providers like FrontBridge, which claims over 3,000 customers.

So, despite the fact that FrontBridge supports non-Microsoft technologies and might seem to compete with Exchange, Microsoft felt that the company would be a good fit since FrontBridge is a service-only company, does not require Microsoft to support non-Windows products, and does not disrupt Microsoft's product plans for Exchange. In this sense, the FrontBridge deal resembles Microsoft's acquisitions of Hotmail and the PlaceWare conferencing service (later renamed Live Meeting).

FrontBridge will retain about 160 employees and will continue to operate from its current offices and data centers after the deal closes, expected sometime in Aug. or Sept. 2005.

Resources

The FrontBridge Web site detailing all of its services is available at www.frontbridge.com.

The Exchange roadmap is described in "Unified Messaging on Exchange Roadmap" on page 8 of the Mar. 2005 Update.

The Sybari acquisition is described in "Microsoft Acquires Sybari Software" on page 19 of the March 2005 Update and "Sybari Acquisition Final" on page 14 of the Aug. 2005 Update.