FrontBridge Positioned in Leaders Quadrant of Top Analyst Report on Email Security Boundary
London, UK – July 6, 2005 – FrontBridge Technologies Inc. today announced that it has been positioned in the “Leaders Quadrant” of Gartner’s recently released report: Email Security Boundary Magic Quadrant 1H05.* Gartner included 21 companies in the report, all determined by a strict set of criteria, including vision, ongoing execution and service breadth. “Leaders” are defined as companies performing well today, have a clear vision of market direction, and actively building competencies to sustain their market position. Gartner’s Magic Quadrant is considered one of the technology industry’s most recognised means of evaluating technology providers.
According to the report, “Companies should evaluate email security boundary solutions through a broader lens. Companies should also pay particular attention to the architecture and mechanisms for efficiently and accurately blocking or slowing email from bad sources, low administrative overhead of the solution, email intrusion prevention and value-added AV capabilities.
The reports also states, “in the cloud” services will be more prevalent, and leading vendors should investigate inclusion of their technologies or operations in this area.
“FrontBridge sees this report as a sign of the shifting nature of the email security market,” said Steve Jillings, president and CEO of FrontBridge Technologies. “We’re seeing more companies gravitating towards the managed email security service model because it offers the highest performance at the lowest total cost of ownership.”
FrontBridge and Its Customers See Convergence in Messaging
Electronic communication, from email to instant messaging, has become the preferred business register documenting transactions between executives, associates, customers, partners, and suppliers. Despite this reliance on electronic messaging, most businesses continue to operate unreliable systems incapable of handling a mission-critical application. These antiquated systems expose businesses to numerous vulnerabilities in three primary categories: compliance, continuity and security. FrontBridge’s vision is to create a perimeter-based protective bridge against all messaging threats, whether it’s the continued threat of spam and viruses or the risks associated with regulatory non-compliance.
“Many of the email security vendors offer similar anti-spam and anti-virus solutions, but we wanted to work with a vendor that could offer a comprehensive solution that took our complicated environment into account,” said Mike Irick, assistant director of academic technology services for California State University San Marcos. “We have many concerns ranging from email privacy to protecting our students, staff and faculty from malicious content. FrontBridge has always been a step ahead with its broad suite of services and we like knowing that they will be there to help us minimise our messaging vulnerabilities with its inclusive one-stop-shop approach.”
FrontBridge Strengthens Services with Strategic Alliances
FrontBridge momentum continues with announcements recently from AT&T, Equant, NEC Unified, Sprint and VeriSign of new services leveraging FrontBridge’s Total Message Management technology.
FrontBridge Total Message Management is a comprehensive suite of managed messaging services for minimising email security, compliance and continuity risks. The complete portfolio includes email and instant message archiving, virus scanning, spam filtering, email encryption, content control, policy enforcement and business continuity. This approach helps companies consolidate complicated supplier relationships, lower total bill of services, simplify new product provisioning and unify technical customer support.
“Messaging-related challenges in the areas of regulatory compliance and security have elevated from solely an IT-level concern to a board room responsibility,” said David King, vice president, NEC Unified Solutions. “Our technology partnership with FrontBridge teams us with an industry leader in secure messaging and enables us to provide our customer base with the broadest suite of services for locking down the most vulnerable corporate network entry point.”
FrontBridge’s channel sales efforts result in one new customer every business hour. In the first quarter of 2005, FrontBridge signed contracts with more than 500 enterprise customers in the financial services, healthcare, legal and manufacturing verticals.
To support this customer acquisition momentum, FrontBridge also announced the opening of new offices and data centres both domestically and internationally in Silicon Valley, Calif.; Frankfurt, Germany; Paris, France; and Winnipeg, Manitoba. As a result, the company will hire new employees in partner operations, engineering and technical support over the next two quarters to assist with supporting growth.
Notes to editor
*1 – Email Security Boundary Magic Quadrant 1H05, Arabella Hallawell, June 30, 2005
About FrontBridge Technologies
FrontBridge is a global provider of comprehensive secure messaging services. Its Total Message Management services ensure the security, compliance and continuity of all electronic messages, with fully-managed services for email and instant message archiving, spam filtering, virus scanning, encrypted email, policy enforcement and disaster recovery. Services are powered globally by the only load-balanced, fully-redundant data centre network to demonstrate 100 percent historical uptime, on top of 99.999 percent service level guarantees. FrontBridge is based in Los Angeles, Calif. with offices in London, Paris, and Winnipeg. Its managed services are trusted and relied upon by more than 4,000 businesses across the globe and are available through the managed service industry’s largest distribution partner network, including IBM, NEC, Sprint, VeriSign, Siemens Business Services, Inc., TELUS and Equant. For more information, visit us on the web at www.frontbridge.com.
Magic Quadrant Disclaimer
The Magic Quadrant is copyrighted June 30, 2005 by Gartner, Inc. and is reused with permission. The Magic Quadrant is a graphical representation of a marketplace at and for a specific time period. It depicts Gartner’s analysis of how certain vendors measure against criteria for that marketplace, as defined by Gartner. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in the Magic Quadrant, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors placed in the “Leaders” quadrant. The Magic Quadrant is intended solely as a research tool, and is not meant to be a specific guide to action. Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.