Antivirus Expertise Acquired

Antivirus vendor GeCAD has sold its intellectual property and technology assets to Microsoft, which will use them to provide unspecified antivirus features in future products. Microsoft believes that it can persuade customers to use antivirus software and keep antivirus signature files up-to-date better than current antivirus vendors. However, that will require considerable resources, and Microsoft’s move continues a trend of bundling into OSs capabilities that were previously left exclusively to partners to provide.

Product Integration, Signature Service Planned

Microsoft will use the assets and expertise of GeCAD, a small, privately held Romanian antivirus company, to integrate antivirus protection into products such as Windows (likely beginning with Longhorn), Windows System servers (such as Exchange and Internet Security and Acceleration Server), and applications (such as the Office suite). Microsoft says that it will eventually provide a paid subscription antivirus signature service, likely as an extension of its Windows Update service, which currently distributes software bug patches for free. Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.