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Changes to Forefront Product Roadmap - Education Customers Please Read!

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Microsoft has decided to better align security and protection solutions with the workloads and applications they protect, Microsoft is announcing changes to the roadmaps of some of the security solutions made available under the Forefront brand.

  1. As part of this effort, the next release of Forefront Online Protection for Exchange, which has long been part of the Office 365 solution, will be named Exchange Online Protection. 
  2. In response to customer demand, we are adding basic antimalware protection to Exchange Server 2013. This protection can be easily turned off, replaced, or paired with other services (like Exchange Online Protection) to provide a layered defense. 
  3. We are discontinuing any further releases of the following Forefront-branded solutions:
    • Forefront Protection 2010 for Exchange Server (FPE)
    • Forefront Protection 2010 for SharePoint (FPSP)
    • Forefront Security for Office Communications Server (FSOCS)
    • Forefront Threat Management Gateway 2010 (TMG)
    • Forefront Threat Management Gateway Web Protection Services (TMG WPS)

For collaboration protection, SharePoint and Lync Servers will continue to offer the built-in security capabilities that many customers use to protect shared documents. For remote access, DirectAccess and Routing and Remote Access Server (RRAS) VPN in Windows Server 2012 provide secure remote access for Windows and cross-platform clients, as well as cross-premise access through site to site VPN. Forefront Unified Access Gateway (UAG) 2010 also continues to provide secure application publishing and cross-platform SSL VPN remote access for a range of mobile devices.
We will continue to provide maintenance and support for the following Forefront solutions through the standard Microsoft support lifecycle (see chart below), but the discontinued Forefront offerings will no longer be available for purchase as of Dec. 1, 2012. 

It is important to note that there are no significant changes to the Forefront Identity Manager or Forefront Unified Access Gateway roadmaps. These solutions continue to be actively developed. Forefront UAG 2010 SP2 was released in August 2012 and Forefront Identity Manager 2010 R2 was release in June 2012.