Symantec’s entrance to the market will be defined by the fact that it has chosen not to break out anti-spyware into a separate product. It will be bundled at no additional cost with AntiVirus Corporate Edition 10.0 and Client Security 3.0.
McAfee, meanwhile, will announce the March 2, 2005 delivery of its competing offering, which was released to beta testing in November. It will be integrated into the corporate editions of its VirusScan software, but with an added fee attached.
Manageability and integration will be the key marketing points from both firms, keen to differentiate themselves from the consumer-oriented early leaders. As part of existing products, the anti-spyware software inherits their management functionality.
There are things that companies don’t want installed on their machines, said Brian Foster, senior director of product management at Symantec. But customers don’t want to have to deploy a separate client to manage.
The difference in how the products will be sold reflects both market drivers and the fact that there is no industry-accepted standard definition of what spyware is.
Pricing models are arguably already being affected by how Microsoft plans to deliver its product. Redmond entered the market in December with its acquisition of Giant Software, and currently has a consumer offering in free beta.
Microsoft will certainly have some bearing on how pricing is affected, said John Bedrick, group marketing manager at McAfee. There will be a core set of features that people will give away for free, probably based on what Microsoft offers.
McAfee’s corporate VirusScan already includes a taster of anti-spyware functionality, Mr Bedrick said. This basically means it can block and remove the top 200 most prolific spyware programs, he said. More functions and definitions require the optional VirusScan module.
The anti-spyware market is currently dominated by private companies that largely target the consumer market. While Computer Associates International Inc acquired its way into the space last year, the other antivirus vendors have been a little quieter.
Microsoft entered the market last month via acquisition, and a recent $108 million funding round for pure-play startup Webroot was said to be mostly geared towards helping the company produce an enterprise-class product.
The market has arrived, no doubt. But Symantec, for one, is playing it like anti-spyware is just an extension to antivirus, particularly in the enterprise space. And for buyers, that may not be a bad thing.
Symantec says that most customers expect their antivirus provider to also protect them from spyware. Executives said that about 75% of the stuff rival anti-spyware programs protect against, Trojans and the like, is already blocked by Symantec antivirus.
McAfee agrees here. Its software will block 5,000 spyware programs and cookies at release, but its antivirus software blocks 45,000 Trojans, for example, which rival vendors lump in with spyware in their marketing claims, Mr Bedrick said.
As if to prove his point, Symantec says its database has 70,000 malware definitions. This includes programs that both companies protect against under the antivirus definition, but that anti-spyware firms protect against under the spyware definition.
