“Microsoft signed a definitive agreement to buy anti-virus and anti-spam vendor Sybari Software for an undisclosed sum, the companies said on Tuesday.

Should the deal pass regulatory hurdles, it will be Microsoft’s second purchase of a company in the anti-virus security market in two years. But unlike GeCAD Software, which Microsoft bought in June 2003, Sybari is less of a direct competitor to other anti-virus companies.

With Sybari, Microsoft gets a vendor that takes an infrastructural approach to software and relies heavily on anti-virus partners. Sybari does not maintain its own anti-virus engine. Instead, its enterprise-focused anti-virus products license and run multiple scanning engines from anti-virus partners against e-mail messages at the gateway or in the mail server. With the current product, Antigen 8.0, customers have the choice of running from one to four anti-virus engines. Two of the engines are from Computer Associates and one each come from Sophos and Norman.”

Full article: Microsoft to Buy Sybari