Jeff -- thanks for this.
This will sound odd, but I like having VIPRE compared to Sophos, as opposed to
many others. It's a very decent product and a product we look at as being in
the same class as VIPRE.
With regard to your points:
Exclusions -- the next major release of VIPRE (Q4) will have best-practices
templates, which will pre-define roles for various types of systems. This will
dramatically help in pre-defining exclusions for servers.
Updates -- We actually turned on hourly updates a few months ago, and found
users didn't like it. I think a lot of that had to do with the updating scheme
inside the product, which spiked CPU usage when applying the update. The next
minor update to VIPRE has code written in it to allow going back to hourly
updates.
24/7 support -- Got it. We are working on improving weekend support, and I
expect you'll find things getting quite a bit better. Your general comments
about support are also perfectly reasonable and we will continue to improve.
Reboots -- New code is being written to separate non-boot required functions
from boot-required functions, which will enable us to only require a reboot in
certain occasions. Our developers have been beaten into submission on this
subject, and they are now terrified of releasing update which requires a reboot
;-)
Sophos actually does require reboots, but they schedule it around major
upgrades, and they push all the reboot-required functions into one release (I
believe they have a policy of only doing reboots once a year). However, not
doing a reboot around a deployment --- I would like some more information on
this. Was this on Vista/Windows 7 machines? Or on XP machines? On XP and
below, it is technically impossible not to require a reboot, based on the
driver model (there are some exceptions to this, but it's a long technical
discussion).
Once again, thanks for the frank evaluation, and I can assure you this email
has plenty of readers inside the organization.
Alex
Alex Eckelberry, CEO
Sunbelt Software
33 N. Garden Avenue, Clearwater, FL 33755 p: 727-562-0101 x220
e: a...@sunbeltsoftware.com MSN: alex...@hotmail.commailto:alex...@hotmail.com
w:
www.sunbeltsoftware.comfile:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/exec3/Application%20Data/Microsoft/Signatures/www.sunbeltsoftware.com
b:
www.sunbeltblog.comfile:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/exec3/Application%20Data/Microsoft/Signatures/www.sunbeltblog.com
From: Jeff S. Gottlieb [mailto:jeff.s.gottl...@gmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, August 11, 2010 4:56 PM
To: NT System Admin Issues
Subject: Sophos vs. Vipre Enterprise (now that we have tested both)
We are in an SMB environment of roughly 60 servers and 1000 hosts, including
Server 2003, 2008, SBS2003, SBS2008, XP Pro SP3, Windows 7, and Vista
workstations. Sophos Endpoint Security along with PureMessaging, and Vipre
Enterprise Premium along with Vipre Email Security are being put to the test
head-to-head.
We are staunch fans of Sunbelt Software. Our experiences with Vipre Email
Security (much improved over Ninja) has been great over the years. For over
10-years we have placed our trust in Trend Micro, something that has
deteriorated slowly over the past 24-months. In any event, we are hoping that
our published comparisons will meet objectivity, and help to give reassurance
to future Vipre users regardless of the decisions we ultimately made.
The Sunbelt 'NT System Admin Issues' forum has been a great help, dating back
to April, more specifically...
4/01/2010 Subject: Enterprise Anti-Virus,
rz...@qwest.netmailto:rz...@qwest.net
4/21/2010 Subject: Sophos vs. Vipre Enterprise,
jholmg...@xlhealth.commailto:jholmg...@xlhealth.com
5/06/2010 Subject: NOD32 Antivirus,
jda...@asmail.ucdavis.edumailto:jda...@asmail.ucdavis.edu
5/09/2010 Subject: Life just keeps getting better,
kurt.b...@gmail.commailto:kurt.b...@gmail.com
7/29/2010 Subject: Vipre effectiveness false positives,
c.house...@gmail.commailto:c.house...@gmail.com
1) Installation / Deployment
Server installs both went smooth. In deployment Sophos had few if any issues.
Viper deployment to server required countless exclusions (painfully so)... in
fact when our server crashed, we were told that a few exclusions were missing
(Agh!). Viper deployment to host on two systems came with MANY surprises. The
Vipre agent loaded a NDIS IM element in the TCPIP stack, causing CISCO
(IPSec) clients to connect... oddly not allowing us to remote TS, Dameware, and
other remote applications. SonicWall VPN clients remained unaffected. Vipre
even caused slowness, freezing during printing, multi-tasking, and issues with
Adobe Acrobat. Some of these issues we just gave up on attempting to resolve
and disabled the firewall entirely. When a MSP firm cannot remote access...this
is serious!! We couldn't get support soon enough... and unfortunately cases
remain open 4-5 days after the fact.
