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Letter to all SurfControl Customers
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To the Customers of SurfControl,
Websense is pleased to announce the completion of its acquisition of SurfControl.
We recognize you will have many questions about what the acquisition means for you and your investment in SurfControl products. Below, please find five key points regarding products and business policies which Websense is implementing to protect your investment. As is always the case in acquisitions, you will hear many rumors about our intentions, especially from our competitors. Regardless of what you might hear to the contrary, these policies are in force for all SurfControl end user customers, worldwide.
- Continued support for SurfControl's Web Filter and Mobile Filter: Although we do not plan to add new features outside of database enhancement, Websense will support these products with a fully staffed maintenance and support team through the end of 2011. There will be no requirement for you to "migrate" to Websense products during this timeframe.
- Continued investment in development of Email Filter, MailControl and WebDefense: These product lines are important to our long term strategy and will remain in active development. We are very excited about opportunities to integrate the technologies from these critical product lines more broadly across Websense's offerings, specifically focusing on building the world's best "reputation services" for the Web and e-mail.
- Enhanced database functionality for Web Filter and Mobile Filter: Websense will enhance these products by supplementing the SurfControl URL database with additional Web filtering and security coverage provided by Websense Security Labs™ and Threatseeker™ technology, including more than 200,000 high-risk sites. We will continue to use the current SurfControl URL categories, so operational disruption will be minimized. We believe this will provide you with significantly improved security functionality. We intend to complete this integration by the end of the first calendar quarter of 2008.
- Price protection on existing SurfControl Web Filter and Mobile Filter subscriptions: When you renew your present subscription for the first time, we will ask you to pay the same amount, per seat or user, that you paid previously. If you have plans to add seats, users or sites, we'll price the expansion the same way.
- Forums for on-going customer communication, focusing on the quality of support and product direction: Communications venues will include an annual customer satisfaction survey and a Customer Advisory Council. Although SurfControl recently completed a customer satisfaction survey in several countries, we will ask you for an update of how we're doing in the next two months in the US and UK. Surveys in other parts of the world will be conducted at a later date. We are structuring these surveys so we can "normalize" the results against those we currently have for Websense products. In our most recent survey, 85% of surveyed customers say they would recommend Websense to peers. We will work hard to achieve this same level of satisfaction for SurfControl products.
As the market leader in Web security, Websense has evolved from providing a single best-of-breed Web filtering product to offering integrated Web, e-mail and internal content security solutions. Today, through an orchestrated strategy of internal development and acquisitions, our solutions range from the highly customizable Websense Web Security Suite™ and Content Protection Suite to the easy-to-install Websense Express™ small and mid-sized business security platform. Our products rely on a foundation of proprietary threat detection and content recognition technologies developed over many years. As a result, only Websense is able to deliver intelligent content protection solutions that combine:
- Unparalleled knowledge of malware and where it resides on the Web to block threats
- Precise identification and categorization of internal documents and information to prevent leaks
- Sophisticated policy engines that enable flexible filtering to enforce web and e-mail security and meet changing business needs
Our acquisition of SurfControl accelerates our strategy, augmenting the Websense product and technology portfolio with e-mail security and an on-demand, hosted option for both e-mail and Web security. Our goal is to offer you the best of both companies: award-winning Web security, innovative protection from information leaks, and highly effective messaging security with solid, competent product support for SurfControl and Websense products, all at competitive prices.
Over time, we hope to prove to you that we are a trustworthy partner with the vision, products, support and services to play an expanded role in your security strategy.
Best regards,
Gene Hodges
Websense Chief Executive Officer