[German]The manufacturer of anti-virus products, Avira, has surprisingly discontinued its product line for enterprise customers. On November 1, 2022, the products concerned will reach the end of support (end-of-life), which may come as a surprise to some users.
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I don't know if there are still administrators among the blog readers who use the Avira business products in corporate environments. I read a first report on the discontinuation of the Avira for Business product line and the discontinuation of the B2B business on November 10, 2020 at German site heise. It stated that Avira sales partners were 'currently' informed by email about the discontinuation of this business area. In the meantime, however, Avira has published an official discontinuation of various products.
Discontinued Avira business products
In its announcement, Avira writes that the following products will be discontinued on 1 November 2022 and reach their end-of-life.
- Avira Pro Business Edition
- Avira Antivirus for Server
- Avira Antivirus for Endpoint
- Avira Antivirus for Small Business
- Avira Antivirus for Exchange
The manufacturer stipulates that the products remain fully functional in their current state until the license period expires. Functionality in this context includes only the update of the detection databases, but not changes or extensions of the software.
Note: There is a 2nd support page with different end-of-life dates. It names the above products as end of life on December 31, 2021 (11 months earlier). I've asked Avira about this discrepancy, but haven't received an answer till now.
Addendum: I asked the press department of Avira about the above discrepancy and got an answer.
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December 31, 2021 is the correct (current) EOL date.
Please find all current data on this page under the heading "Discontinued support for Avira products": https://www.avira.com/de/support-product-lifecycle.
Avira is working to update its pages and some pages are now password protected. The dates for license orders given below are outdated for 2021.
Dates for license orders
According to Avira, the licenses that are still valid after this EOL date remain functional in their current state until the end of the license period (heise is still talking about reimbursements, the publisher has probably received a statement from Avira). Existing licenses for the discontinued products can be extended as follows:
- From November 1, 2019: for one or two years
- From 1 November 2020: for one year
- From November 1, 2021: no extension possible
This means that the products will finally expire on November 1, 2022 (but see the above note with Dec. 31, 2021 EoL), and users will have to look for other products. As of now, registration is no longer possible for channel partners, as Avira writes here (deleted). Due to the discontinuation of the Avira business products, Avira will not enter into new partnerships for resale with immediate effect. I think this means that Avira for Business will be dead pretty much immediately.
Difficult business for AV vendors
Why Avira's B2B business has now been discontinued so suddenly remains unclear – even at heise. However, in April it became known that the German Avira GmbH & Co. KG from Tettnang, which sells anti-virus solutions under the name Avira, was taken over by the investor group Investcorp from the Kingdom of Bahrain. I had reported in the blog post Investcorp from Bahrein acquires German AV vendor Avira. However, in a statement Avira writes that the above step had been prepared since 2019 and the takeover did not play a role.
In general, the market for antivirus vendors seems to be quite difficult. Sophos was acquired by Bravo in March 2020 (see Sophos acquired by Thoma Bravo). And the takeover of Symantec by Broadcom has left a mess for resellers and customers, as I reported in the article Symantec acquisition by Broadcom ends in license/support chaos as well as in the article Statement from Broadcom on issue after Symantec acquisition.
In addition, the main area of activity, Microsoft Windows 10, is a difficult place for vendors to operate. I regularly report here in the blog about issues related to third-party AV products and Windows 10 updates or feature upgrades. So the vendors have to do a lot of work, to keep its security products running.
