Microsoft finally allows small business use of Security Essentials for free

[40hz]

Micorosoft has just announced they will allow business use of up to ten copies of Microsoft Security Essentials free of charge starting in October 2010.

Prior to this, free usage was restricted to "personal use" only.

Security Essentials is a very capable antivirus/antimalware app which compares favorably against similar products from the likes of AVG, Avira, and others.

Here is some great news for all of the small businesses out there from Microsoft that I am very happy to be able to tell you about!

As we all know, small businesses are under incredible pressure to:

  1. Reduce operating costs
  2. Improve productivity
  3. Grow their business
  4. Do all of this in a very challenging economic climate

It’s also no secret that most small businesses today do not have a dedicated IT professional on staff to manage their IT resources (which you may recall is why we originally launched the Small Business Specialist Community of partners worldwide). Small business owners and employees are focused on running their business, not managing complicated IT infrastructure.

imageFor those reasons, we are extremely excited today to let you know that Microsoft is making its Microsoft Security Essentials available to small businesses on up to 10 PCs for FREE, beginning in early October!  By providing Microsoft Security Essentials to small businesses free of charge, Microsoft extends its commitment to help these companies save money and grow their business by offering no-cost protection from viruses, spyware and other malicious threats.

Not familiar with Microsoft Security Essentials?  In many ways, Microsoft Security Essentials is an excellent solution for your small business. It is very easy to get and very simple to use. The software requires no registration, trials or renewals and is available for download directly from Microsoft. There is also no need to have other cumbersome security programs installed on your PCs since Microsoft Security Essentials provides real-time protection to address the ongoing security needs of a genuine Windows PC, helping to protect it from viruses, spyware and other malicious threats. Perhaps best of all; however, is that Microsoft Security Essentials is designed to run quietly in the background, enabling you to continue using your PC – and running your small business – without constant interruptions.

Take a look at this video by Theresa Burch, director of product management, who gives a look at the details of Microsoft Security Essentials for a little more about what Microsoft Security Essentials can do for your business:

Of especial interest to system builders is this bit of news (emphasis added):

OEMs and System Builders can pre-install Microsoft Security Essentials on their consumer-bound PCs to provide quality malware protection to their customers out of the box and at no cost. For more information related to opportunities for Microsoft partners, please visit the Microsoft Security Essentials partner page. This is one more tool you can use in your services offerings to provide a complete solution for your small business clients.

Full announcement and download links can be found here.

Sweet!  

[Stoic Joker]

Now that's the best news I've heard all day..! 

[IainB]

A great idea, but...
WARNING! --- START OF RANT ---

"...we are extremely excited today to let you know that Microsoft is..."

The word "excited", as used here, is straight out of the Bullshit Bingo phrasebook.
Why do they have to be "excited" at all? What on earth is exciting about it anyway? Are you excited about it? Why? They must have been planning this for ages, so the professed "excitement" must surely be insincere.

I really do get fed up with this BS - Google are just as bad. I read most of the Google-related blogs, and I have lost count of the number of times they say "...we are excited to announce that...etc." with moronic, mind-numbing repetition. I think Amway started the rot by using the term as standard BS in the '80s, with their "exciting bisnez" of pyramid marketing of mediocre products.
--- END OF RANT ---

Having let off steam, I have to say that the free personal-use version of Microsoft Security Essentials seems to be very good, stable and non-intrusive (also see comments on this elsewhere in this forum). I was using that free Personal version and then switched to using the new ß of it when Microsoft released it a short while back, and it seems pretty much faultless. A great anti-virus product IMHO.  

This announcement probably presages a genuine free advantage to small businesses and is likely to engender improved market acceptance/approval of Microsoft's new, and apparently less predatory (than historically) marketing tactics. Time will tell.

[JavaJones]

I dunno, I've been genuinely excited to announce lots of stuff as part of a company before. I've been responsible (or at least partly) for some of those "we're excited to announce" messages before, and yes, we were in fact genuinely excited. I see no reason to assume Google or even MS would not be, at least sometimes. Maybe not with every "we're excited to announce" announcement they make though.

Oh yes, and good on MS for doing this! It's a great boon to small businesses and non-profits. Especially as MSE is actually a very decent product as compared to e.g. Mcaffee or Norton, both of which are otherwise more likely to get small business sales.

- Oshyan

[40hz]

Interesting article on MSE vs McAfee:

Microsoft vs. McAfee: How free antivirus outperformed paid

By Ed Bott | November 14, 2010, 6:00pm PST

How effective is free antivirus software? I had a chance to see a real, in-the-wild example just this month, and the results were, to put it mildly, unexpected. The bottom line? Microsoft’s free antivirus solution found and removed a threat that two well-known paid products missed. Here are the details. [Update: After I publlished this post, a second example appeared, courtesy of a rogue commenter in the Talkback section. See the results at the end of this post.]

-more-

Read the rest here.