Forefront TMG End Of Life and What It Means For TMG Reporter

Today Microsoft announced that they are discontinuing Forefront Threat Management Gateway (TMG). This is only one of the major changes that Microsoft is making to the Forefront product line in an 'effort to better align security and protection solutions with the workloads and applications they protect'.

Microsoft is providing current Forefront TMG customers with mainstream support up until the end of 2015, and extended support until 2020.

This is actually no surprise, since it was rumored to be the case on May 25th 2011 when Forefront TMG was purposefully excluded from Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Secure Web Gateway Report as Microsoft confirmed to Gartner that it was not going to be shipping another full version release of Forefront TMG. For more information see Debra Shinder's article The Demise of Threat Management Gateway - Is Microsoft backing away from the edge?

Since then Service Pack 2 was released providing a slight glimmer of hope, but today's official announcement is the final nail in the coffin for Forefront TMG.

What does this mean for Fastvue TMG Reporter?

We are happy to tell you that we are continuing our development of TMG Reporter and completing our scheduled roadmap for the product.

Changing your security infrastructure is difficult, and there are still three years of mainstream support left for Forefront TMG. TMG's substantial installation base is therefore not going away any time soon (we still get daily requests to support ISA Server for which mainstream support ended last year!).

Although the install base may no longer be increasing, we will continue to service and support the large demand for enhanced user and network reporting in this market.

Even when you do change infrastructure, many of you will still maintain historical log data for the time Forefront TMG was running and have the need to report on that data long after Forefront TMG has been retired. (Side note: logging to a remote SQL server is a great option to separate your log data from your Forefront TMG installation).

Fastvue therefore remains committed to all Forefront TMG customers and will continue to provide the best reporting solution available.

Speaking of which, keep an eye out for our new custom reporting features coming in the next 4-6 weeks, followed by enhanced group reporting later this year.

Long live Forefront TMG!