Heard this news after vendor visited us yesterday. This vendor has been developing proxy-kind products instead of just Microsft plug-in for several years and they keep promoting their software and appliance to us, also another vendor has been on the same track for a while although they are not so much actively selling. But Microsoft’s roadmap for Forefront or TMG proxy product was not very clear in the past few years, TMG, UAG and codename ‘Stirling’ are always confusing, even to a technical guy like me; and there’s no exposure in any recent Microsoft events. Also I heard Microsoft didn’t really make money from ISA/TMG, maybe that is one of the main reason behind the whole story.
Still trying to swallow this news as Mrs. Shinder did, although this may not be a news anymore after two months since it’s revealed by Gartner (not Microsoft!).
Here are some links I found informative and helpful:
http://blogs.isaserver.org/shinder/2011/05/27/death-of-tmg/
http://spanougakis.wordpress.com/2011/06/01/no-more-tmg/
http://blog.konab.com/2011/05/what-will-happen-with-tmg/
http://blogs.gusac.net/post/Microsoft-to-discontinue-TMG-(ISA-Server).aspx
A summary of Gartner’s report can be downloaded from McAfee site, link in this blog, I am not sure if that is the $1995 one.
http://proxyupdate.blogspot.com/2011/07/microsoft-planning-to-phase-out.html#links