Dr Solomons leaps on IBM move

Dr Solomons is attempting to poach disaffected IBM antivirus customers following Big Blue's decision to join forces with Symantec to produce a single family of antivirus products.

The leading vendor of antivirus scanners claimed existing IBM customers are being abandoned and will be vulnerable to attacks from a variety of different viruses during the lengthy transition period to Symantec.

In its bid to pinch customers, Dr Solomons has offered IBM customers free product migration and pledged to honour the remaining licence period up to 31 May 1999.

Dr Solomons said it would also supply antivirus software for O/S 2 users.

Symantec has already signalled that it would not be providing a migration path for these customers until later in the year.

Mike Hill, Dr Solomons senior vice president of product operations, said: 'The issue for IBM antivirus users is that their protection is compromised during this transition.

'Uninstallation and installation is both time-consuming and a potential security threat. By the end of June, we will have a tool which will automatically remove IBM and install Dr Solomon's without risk.'

Lindsay Wright, director of antivirus specialists BrownWright Security, whose report of antivirus scanners was recently attacked by Dr Solomons, agreed that customers would benefit from a choice of antivirus products.

He said: 'To be honest the IBM offering did not do well in my tests.

Equally, the Norton product was pretty awful. If I wanted a virus scanner I would buy Dr Solomons or Thunderbyte.'

He added: 'It looks to me as if IBM is bailing out of a market in which it is a secondary player.'