McAfee.com ahead of Microsoft on .Net push

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by Ashlee Vance

LAS VEGAS, Nevada (IDG) -- While a number of companies toned down their presence here at this year's Comdex, McAfee.com decided to adopt an all-out approach for the show, primarily to unveil its .Net initiative.

The security specialist seems to have beaten Microsoft Corp. to its own .Net punch. Microsoft touts its .Net initiative as the future of the company's Internet technology strategy; however, up to this point, Microsoft has been more talk than show in actually implementing .Net in its own products.

McAfee.com decided to launch its own .Net party here this week with a series of Web-based applications that have the vendor caught between being the first to push Microsoft's agenda along and getting into a head-to-head battle with the Redmond, Washington-based software maker.

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On the one hand, McAfee.com's latest security applications complement its past relationship with Microsoft. The security vendor has long provided applications which help protect Microsoft's Windows operating system from outside threats and often enjoyed having its antivirus applications bundled along with Windows on many PCs. McAfee.com's Monday announcement of new Internet-enabled security services continued its focus on the Windows platform and stands as the first outside contribution to Microsoft's .Net plans.

On the other hand, part of McAfee.com's .Net initiative is its new Productivity.Net suite of office applications modeled after the Word, PowerPoint and Excel programs from Microsoft. McAfee commissioned Web-based productivity application maker ThinkFree to develop the MobileOffice suite which fits under the Productivity.Net header.

"We are not trying to be David against Goliath," said Ken Rhie, president of ThinkFree, comparing his company's office suite to that of Microsoft's, in an interview here.

And yet, Rhie demonstrated a completely Web-enabled series of productivity applications not only with the same look-and-feel as Microsoft's but also a platform that reads all of the Word, PowerPoint and Excel files directly on a browser. Rhie said it took his company three years to design the applications and expects it would take Microsoft three to four years on its own to come up with something similar.

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While he admits to ongoing talks with Microsoft about using the new McAfee.com software, Rhie said nothing is close to being finalized. In the meantime, McAfee.com will gladly host the applications via its own Web site along with a number of new products launched with the .Net initiative.

With a McAfee.com banner draped over the side of the MGM Grand Hotel here and a McAfee blimp patrolling the night skies, the company clearly put some serious resources toward promoting its .Net efforts.

"From a customer standpoint, you pay a flat subscription fee, and we will keep adding services," said Srivats Sampath, chief executive officer and president at McAfee.com, in an interview. "There will be some interesting rewards for being the first mover (with .Net)."

Under its .Net strategy, McAfee.com divided its services into three categories: Productivity.Net, Security.Net and HelpDesk.Net.

The productivity segment takes the MobileOffice applications and adds a MobileDisk service where users can store, access and share files over the Web. Both Rhie and Sampath see this a way for mobile workers to consolidate files and then work with them from any location connected to the Internet. Productivity.Net costs $49.95 per user for one year of service.

The security segment relies on many of McAfee.com's bread-and-butter services along with a couple of new additions. Users receive antivirus and firewall applications and some of the company's recently introduced wireless security services. McAfee.com offers antivirus applications for devices running Palm's Palm OS, Windows CE and Symbian's EPOC operating systems. A new virus map feature also fits under this heading where McAfee.com shows a real-time picture of the globe and marks what kind of threats exist in different regions. Users can click on countries to find the top ten viruses affecting users and how many machines have been hit.

The helpdesk offering lets users gather more information on viruses and what to do when one hits their machines. It also gives users a way to recover lost or deleted files, folders, partitions or complete drives. McAfee.com also adds to its ASP (application service provider) role with applications that can speed a computer's performance and lists of updates that are available to both McAfee.com applications and other companies' software updates alike. Both Security.Net and HelpDesk.Net cost $69.95 each per user for one year.

Sampath played down his competition with Microsoft, saying that McAfee.com could help Microsoft define where it wants to take its own .Net initiative and that McAfee could teach the software giant a few lessons as an ASP.

"There will be some overlaps like what we are doing on the MobileOffice side, but it will be beneficial to both them (Microsoft) and us," he said. "There is a lot that we can teach Microsoft."

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