Microsoft has decided to drop a standalone product designed to protect PCs against malware threats in order to concentrate on server-based security and management software and hosted services.
Stirling, the next generation of the Forefront Protection Suite for end points (clients), was already delayed and was finally put down in a blog post on Tuesday. The Forefront team
explained that Redmond had made the decision in order to align "security management with systems and application management".
As part of this strategy, Forefront Protection Manager (FPM) will not be released to market. Instead, multi-server management for Forefront Protection 2010 for Exchange Server (FPE) and Forefront Protection 2010 for SharePoint (FPSP) will be delivered through a streamlined solution for messaging and collaboration workloads, both on-premises and in the cloud.
