Microsoft Scoops Up E-Mail Compliance Vendor FrontBridge

Microsoft said Wednesday it will acquire FrontBridge Technologies Inc., which manages companies' E-mail systems for compliance with government regulations and filtering spam and viruses. Microsoft didn't disclose terms of the deal.

FrontBridge is a privately held company that had estimated sales of $10.1 million in 2003, according to Hoover's Inc. Microsoft said it plans to sell businesses a service that would make sure their E-mail complies with regulations such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, and Securities and Exchange Commission regulations.

The service will archive companies' E-mail and instant messages for retrieval; apply filters to block E-mail spam, viruses, and phishing attacks; and provide availability of E-mail during disasters or emergencies.

FrontBridge operates eight data centers around the world for high availability of E-mail. Its products work with Microsoft's Exchange Server E-mail software and IBM's Lotus Notes.

Companies including AT&T, IBM, and Siemens distribute FrontBridge's service.

Fighting E-mail-borne attacks and getting computer systems in order to comply with new government regulations are high on U.S. executives' IT to-do lists. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said in an interview last month that regulatory compliance is "a very strong focal point for CEOs and CIOs" and that IT products that help them will be "quite popular." Ballmer said at the time that Microsoft plans to build features to support compliance into its software in order to induce upgrades to products that include those features.