In an email from McAfee, this is what they had to say:
Dear McAfee SnapGear Customer,So, with that, a good product has been killed off by McAfee in a very, very similar way to the Shitas Touch that Symantec has been known for over the years.
In an effort to streamline McAfee channel offerings and expenses, McAfee has made the decision to no longer continue the McAfee SnapGear appliances. Due to the product being primarily an OEM technology, moving forward, the SnapGear appliances will be following McAfee’s EOL policy. This notification is to inform you of this decision and the associated end of life schedule.
The policy is intended to provide our customers and partners with information and time to plan the evolution of their environment and migrate to replacement technologies. As the multifunction firewall market continues to grow both in size and profitability, McAfee’s strategy includes alternative technology for the midmarket and branch office segments leveraging the McAfee Firewall Enterprise line, which will be providing a new offering in the second quarter of 2010. Additional information on the new offering will be made available in the coming months.
The SnapGear appliances will continue to be sold until the end of sale (EOS) date specified below. There will be no change to support services offered to ensure all customer issues are addressed and renewals for add-on subscriptions and support will be fulfilled as usual until the EOL date specified. Again, McAfee is committed to supporting current customers and products. Details on McAfee’s EOL plan can be obtained from the McAfee.com Web site.
SnapGear appliances will be entering a maintenance mode, which will provide issue resolution at McAfee’s discretion, but no product enhancements will be made moving forward. McAfee recommends customers contact their reseller for advice on replacement technology and a migration path when needed.
The following list details the EOL schedule for the SnapGear product line. NOTE: Support, Web filtering, and TrustedSource services can continue to be renewed. Support and subscription end dates cannot extend past the EOL date.
SnapGear Model: SG300
Appliance EOS: April 26, 2009
Appliance EOL: April 26, 2012
SnapGear Model: SG310
Appliance EOS: July 11, 2010
Appliance EOL: July 11, 2013
SnapGear Model: SG560
Appliance EOS: October 12, 2009
Appliance EOL: July 11, 2013
SnapGear Model: SG560U
Appliance EOS: July 11, 2010
Appliance EOL: July 11, 2013
SnapGear Model: SG560D
Appliance EOS: July 11, 2010
Appliance EOL: July 11, 2013
SnapGear Model: SG565
Appliance EOS: July 11, 2010
Appliance EOL: July 11, 2013
SnapGear Model: SG580
Appliance EOS: July 11, 2010
Appliance EOL: July 11, 2013
SnapGear Model: SG640
Appliance EOS: July 11, 2010
Appliance EOL: July 11, 2013
SnapGear Model: SG710
Appliance EOS: December 1, 2006
Appliance EOL: April 15, 2010
SnapGear Model: SG710+
Appliance EOS: December 1, 2006
Appliance EOL: April 15, 2010
SnapGear Model: SG720
Appliance EOS: July 11, 2010
Appliance EOL: July 11, 2013
This schedule is also currently published on McAfee.com. To reach this page you must navigate to:
McAfee.com-->Medium Business-->Support-->Supported product versions-->Appliances-->UTM Firewall (SnapGear)
You can also access the KnowledgeBase article, KB68423 at https://kc.mcafee.com/corporate/index?page=content&id=KB68423
QUESTION: Does McAfee provide any alternative solutions to provide some or all of the features available on the SnapGear appliances?
a. McAfee Firewall Enterprise offers both entry level appliances and virtual solutions for the Mid-Market and Enterprise.
b. McAfee EWS has both appliance and virtual solutions for SMB/Mid-Market mail and web security.
c. McAfee SmartFilter provides web filtering on a wide variety of platforms.
d. McAfee Web Protection Service provides Web Filtering and Antivirus/Antimalware in the Cloud (SaaS).
e. McAfee SaaS Email Protection & Continuity is a great Cloud solution for SMB messaging.
If you have further questions, please contact your McAfee reseller, or you may also email questions to: utmfirewallsales@mcafee.com.
Thanks, but I'll be looking elsewhere (and not to SonicWall, thanks all the same) for a decent replacement to SnapGear. Maybe Cyberoam or FortiGate or even Tech-Eye if you can fight their website to find out what they actually have/sell. We'll be using the Mikrotik range of products through Duxtel in Melbourne where they are suitable - they are great products, but don't have the UTM abilities that SnapGear had.
Obviously, some of this UTM functionality, such as spam filtering, to be truly effective needs to be out in the cloud so that not only does the malicious junk not actually reach your office network, but also so that the bandwidth this spam consumes doesn't choke your (relatively) small office Internet connection and I'm looking at a cloud-based web proxy solution, too, to replicate what cloud-based spam filtering of email does, but for web browsing.
Regards,
The Outspoken Wookie
11 comments:
Yes I am dirty about the death of Snapgear as well. It's all about shareholders profit - no doubt McAfee management have done a cost benefits analysis and determined that annual subscription to monthy virus signatures is more profitable than keeping a hardware line floating. so sad
SnapGear routers have been the anchor of our networks for years. A great product. Strong, secure, flexable, and nicely priced. And now I dislike McAfee even more then before - if that is possible.
RIP SnapGear. Fortigate did not provide a warranty if a support contract was not purchased. I am thinking of trying Juniper's line. Any thoughts?
Same here, SnapGear has been our go-to UTM device for small businesses for years under all of the various brands. This is one of the best products that I have ever worked with period. I was already not a fan of McAfee when they aquired SC, but thought maybe if they saw the value in such a great product line, they were worth another look. Instead they kill the one attractive product in their line. Thanks McAfee.
TOW, I believe we met once at Microsoft Partner Conference!
Anyway, I'm ticked at McAfee killing off such a nice product, we are changing clients to pfsense running in virtual environment. Works great and keeps same story from repeating itself in future.
G'day Anonymous,
We may well have met at WPC or APC, but as I don't know your name, I can't tell! :)
Yes, pfSense, based on m0n0wall is quite nice. We're looking at either pfSense or RouterOS in a virtual environment - both of which are rather nice.
I have been using the SG line for over 7 years. Hate they are killing it -- Tried Cyberoam -- HATED it. I wish someone would buy the SG rights - hell - I'd build them by hand if McAfee wanted to relinquish the rights :)
ISome the the SG's have been running ipsec tunnels between offices for over 5 years without a hardware failure, upgrade or scheduled reboot. They just work!
Check out some of the Astaro offerings - they've been around for many years nopw and have some quite decent options available.
I have been using this product for over 10 years, first was lineo, then cyberguard, then snaggear, then secure computing, then mcafee. I have purchased over 1000 of these units in the past 10+ years and very sad that mcafee didn't see the value. I believe it was a strategic move just to take this product out of the market.
If anyone finds a comparable product in the same price range, please post!
This is sad as we're starting to have to replace units that have been deployed for many years. After some research I've decided on the Watchguard units.
We've actually been pretty impressed with the CyberRoam products of late.
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