The compettion of Anti Virus Vendors

This article concerns the Anti Virus vendors. I will write at my own personal view of this matter. AV Vendors are big companies that over 3 years now have been entered in competition game of which will win the bet of the best Anti Virus and in the last year..firewall product. The current fashion of these comanies is to combine Anti Virus and Firewall product in a single package. The fact is that is takes fewer money to complete such products than to test them. As an example write my opinon as Electronic Engineer myself new that it takes fewer money to fabricate a chip and a lot of money to test for chip operation. This testing process is being difficult, takes time, time is not always available if you know that your competitors are ready to publish a new product, so you publish a product full of mallfunctions and holes to the market in order to be there. There is always the rule, "be there or be square". I do not know where you are from guys and how you face a new product but in my country "Greece" new products are not welcome as simple as new products. We leave a time of at least 6 months before we put and after we test a product to production. I recenlty have faced lots and lots of problems in new of Anti Virus products while I tested them and when I talk to AV vendors or their representatives receive no answer about the problems that the new product brings into market.
To be continued....

 

[support66]

Since I cannot edit it I will copy paste to continue

This article concerns the Anti Virus vendors. I will write at my own personal view of this matter. AV Vendors are big companies that over 3 years now have been entered in competition game of which will win the bet of the best Anti Virus and in the last year..firewall product. The current fashion of these companies is to combine Anti Virus and Firewall product in a single package. The fact is that is takes fewer money to complete such products than to test them. As an example write my opinon as Electronic Engineer myself new that it takes fewer money to fabricate a chip and a lot of money to test for chip operation. This testing process is being difficult, takes time, time is not always available if you know that your competitors are ready to publish a new product, so you publish a product full of mallfunctions and holes to the market in order to be there. There is always the rule, "be there or be square". I do not know where you are from guys and how you face a new product but in my country "Greece" new products are not welcome as simple as new products. We leave a time of at least 6 months before we put and after we test a product to production. I recenlty have faced lots and lots of problems in new of Anti Virus products while I tested them and when I talk to AV vendors or their representatives receive no answer about the problems that the new product brings into market. AV as well as other software companies rush to bring their products into market and try to solve their internal program mallfunctions by publish hotfixes. In general they do know their product problems before they publish into market the product. A representative of AV product told me that his AV company does give priorities on big customer market such as USA market and does not give priorities to people that do recommend and ask for more from an AV product. In addition told me that people from other countries such USA and Germany does not search the product of how would they think that the product would be a better product, they take it as it is.
I am sorry but we people in Greece we do want more from AV products, we do get mad from AV disfunctions and we do get mad when we know that the Vendors knew their program problems and never told us a single warning before we implement their product into 10000 PC's spendind hours of work...
So in general, AV and in general software vendors beware someone is watching you.

Sorry I will refer or say any names.

 

[AVChap]

Is this a threat to AV vendors? If you've been reading the posts here, many of us are already doing that and we do our part by giving feedback to these AV vendors on what makes their programs good or bad.

As for you having problems with any AV program, the best approach is to work WITH them, not against them.

Now, how do you propose to determine which is the BETTER AV program, would that eliminate companies from creating new programs? I don't think so. Any criteria/evaluation oon aV programs will ALWAYS BE SUBJECTIVE. It will never be objective as the criteria will always tend to favor one or a couple of programs.

This is my view (from both inside & outside the AV world).

AVChap
... my $1 worth of advise, 2cents isn't enough due to inflation

 

[KimberTech]

AVChap I think you have it just right.
If you work with the companies instead of getting mad at them you might get somewhere.

Harping on the Vendors is a waste of breath....always has been. They do what they do, for better or worse.

IMHO it is a waste of time, and if you don't like a product...you don't have to use it.

Members of Tek-Tips provide answers to questions based on the information given. For the best answers, post detailed descriptions of the issue. Use the search features of the site to see if your issue was already addressed in another thread.

 

[support66]

I would always work with companies to get better results on performance quality and price for their products. What I am getting mad sometimes and I felt that I wanted to write few words down is that sometimes while they know for things that could be happened they release products into market. Well how yould you sound to you that you iplement a centralized product to 30000 PC's spending hours of study design and implementation to find out that the product in few months would need upgrade or hotfix implementation in order to work properly. Place your hand in your heart and answer to me sincerely.

 

[AVChap]

Then you're waging a Quixotic war. There will NEVER be a program which will not require an upgrade or a hotfix, simple because of the diversity of the networks that it is being implemented on. IFF there was a universally common network implemented EVERYWHERE, only then will that be probably, not even possible yet.

We have resigned this to a fact that this will always happen and just take steps to do it. BUT, we make sure that we give the vendor a piece of our mind.


AVChap
... my $1 worth of advise, 2cents isn't enough due to inflation

 

[KimberTech]

One possibly missed point.

If it were that easy to maintain such networks, IT Admin would be out of work.

Looking after a large network is a big responsibility...and people are paid to do it. As technology advances, things are fixed. The company that wrote the software offers these for free a lot of the time, at least they care enough to notice....after all...they have already made the sale.

If you provide feedback on products, they will know where to focus efforts to improve.
If lots of people to it, then they will definitely see a need.
So many people grumble, but not at anyone who can change it.

Members of Tek-Tips provide answers to questions based on the information given. For the best answers, post detailed descriptions of the issue. Use the search features of the site to see if your issue was already addressed in another thread.

 

[support66]

Looking after a large network is a big responsibility...and people are paid to do it. As technology advances, things are fixed. The company that wrote the software offers these for free a lot of the time, at least they care enough to notice....after all...they have already made the sale.

I would agree with you. But tell me what excuse you are going to give when you do work in timeframes and things go wrong after you finish. The problem is who is going to pay the working hours after a 1 or 2 months period where things need to be fixed?

If you provide feedback on products, they will know where to focus efforts to improve.
If lots of people to it, then they will definitely see a need.So many people grumble, but not at anyone who can change it.

I do provide feedback on such products due to the fact that I am responsible for large AV centralized installations and I always looking for something better.
The one thing that I do not like and wrote it into my post is that companies look their customers just like a number and not a personality. They will try to satisfy the one that buys lots of licenses and they will tell to the one that does consume fewer licenses but has ideas to develop more the software in order to work more efficiently that has to wait a year or two..

 

[mudskipper]

support66 -- It sounds to me like your major beef is that the companies do not take the time to properly test the product. It is doubtful that you will hear many disagreements on this point.

However, perhaps we can save you some heartache here. You said, "...never told us a single warning before we implement their product into 10000 PC's spendind hours of work...".

Well, there are several resources to look up software issues BEFORE installing the package. Several forums, many websites, etc., etc. tend to have this kind of information. You will find articles, testimonials, and questions if you research your product carefully. Okay, okay, so you want the "latest and greatest"? Well, then this is the price that you pay.....

To sum it up, before installing software on 10000 machines, I would surely test it and research it first. I agree that this will not make you %100 percent prepared for every contingency--but it would certainly help!

Mudskipper
-----------------
Groucho said it best- "A four year-old child could understand this!
Quick! Run out and find me a four year-old child: I can't make heads nor tails out of this!"

 

[support66]

To sum it up, before installing software on 10000 machines, I would surely test it and research it first. I agree that this will not make you %100 percent prepared for every contingency--but it would certainly help!

Well my friend one single mistake, just like a hotfix for example, a single hotfix will take few hours to implement if there is a problem..

It sounds to me like your major beef is that the companies do not take the time to properly test the product. It is doubtful that you will hear many disagreements on this point.

Yes you are damn right...For us technical stuff price it is not matter of concern always...

 

[FatesWebb]

Ummmm.... it is AV software, think about it logicaly.

you create a great av package and all is good!

a virus comes out that does something that no viruses before did, or new software comes out. now your great av package needs a hotfix to address the virus or incompatible software...

virus writers are updating the viruses every day, you think you will have a good av package that will need no update?

I think that if a company is not making updates and hotfixes, that is when it would be scary!!



FatesWebb

if you do what I suggested it is not my fault...