Less than a year after buying Sybari Software Inc., Microsoft Corp. has bid farewell to the Sybari brand name.

In an address in Munich, Germany, earlier this month, Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer said the software giant would rename Sybari's flagship product line Microsoft Antigen.

A spokesperson for the Redmond, Wash., software giant said Antigen was re-branded after a review to ensure it meets Microsoft's high standards for secure code development.

Sybari products harness multiple anti-spam and anti-virus scan engines to provide a multi-layer defense for servers delivering e- mail and instant messages. A beta version, which includes an anti- virus scan engine developed by Microsoft, is expected to launch in the second quarter of 2006.

A Microsoft spokesperson declined to say how many of Sybari's roughly 285 employees remained eight months after the acquisition was announced. In July, ZDNet Germany quoted a Microsoft human resources official who said the company expected to retain about 150 Sybari employees.

Sybari was acquired by Microsoft in February as the company prepared for an initial public offering that could have yielded as much as $53.6 million.

In June, Microsoft said Sybari headquarters would remain in East Northport. Responding to an e-mail query, the Microsoft spokesperson said, Currently, Sybari engineering, product management, sales and administration continue to reside in Long Island.

In the wake of the acquisition, Microsoft also discontinued sales of Antigen products for the UNIX and Linux operating systems, which compete with Microsoft's dominant Windows franchise.

Sybari was founded in 1995 by former New York City police officer Robert Wallace.

On Oct. 12, Microsoft and Yahoo announced that they would connect their instant-messaging services. Previously, individual and business users could send messages only to those who subscribed to the same service. The alliance is expected to put pressure on the Time Warner's America Online unit, whose instant-messaging service has roughly the same number of subscribers as Microsoft and Yahoo! combined.

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