Also, I thought Stirling was the unreleased management product/console that sits on top of the Forefront suite, rather than the suite itself. Is that not the plan?
Thanks!
Today Microsoft announced its plans for releasing two more pieces of its “Stirling” (a k a Forefront) enterprise security suite: Forefront Threat Management Gateway 2010 (TMG) and Forefront Unified Access Gateway 2010 (UAG).
The final TMG bits are available to customers for testing and purchase as of today, December 3. The Forefront team is planning to release UAG to manufacturing in mid-December, with general availability of the final bits slated for early 2010, officials said.
Forefront is a collection of many different products. Microsoft has delayed the delivery of a number of Forefront components by several months during the course of this year because of various compatibility and interoperability reasons. As company officials acknowledged this past spring, Microsoft is staggering the rollout of Forefront over a series of months, from late 2009 to the second half of 2010.
TMG and UMG are both aimed at securing endpoints. TMG is focused on making browsing safer. UAG provides employees, partners and vendors secure remote access to corporate information.
TMG is the successor to Microsoft’s ISA Server product, and provides URL filtering, anti-malware and intrusion-protection technologies rolled into one. URL filtering is handled by a new cloud-based Reputation Services component that is hosted by Microsoft. Microsoft maintains a list of Web domains and pages that are pulled from multiple sources, including lists maintained by Hotmail, Internet Explorer, Widnows Live, Brightcloud, M8e6 and FutureSoft.
UAG is the successor to Microsoft’s Intelligent Application Gateway product.It supports and enhances the DirectAccess technology that is built into the current versions of Windows client/server.
Here’s Microsoft’s Forefront delivery roadmap:
