Avira’s sales partners are currently being informed by e-mail about an early discontinuation of Avira’s business security products: Licenses that actually only expire in the course of the year 2022 should expire, therefore expire on January 1st 2022. In addition, all existing partner contracts are to be terminated and the B2B business to be completely discontinued by the end of this year.

heise online already has several on this matter Send letters to Avira partners independent of each other, along with the quoted wording, to the relevant email. At the request of heise online, however, there was no further information so far, a requested official statement including confirmation from Avira is pending.

License validity shortened without further ado “We would like to inform you that we are launching Avira B2B Business for the 31. 12. 2020 and the relevant departments of Avira will close at this time, “reads the email quoted by the readers. To the 31. December 2021 the company terminated the licenses (regardless of their actual term) and support for the following products:

Avira Antivirus Pro Business Edition Avira Antivirus for Server Avira Antivirus for Endpoint Avira Antivirus for Small Business Avira Exchange Security The products lose support and functionality on January 1st 2021 – regardless of the originally set Duration.

In the e-mail it is also pointed out that it is still until 30. 11. 2020 is possible to acquire licenses with a maximum term of one year via the PartnerNet and the Channel Partner Team. There are also license extensions for existing products up to 31. December 2021 still possible.

Breach of trust with advance notice Should Avira confirm the information available in this form, it would at least seem questionable whether and to what extent partners and end customers after the abrupt and not exactly trustworthy end-of-life announcement actually consider further license purchases and renewals.

The sudden end of support would not come completely unexpected: For some time now, new registrations for sales partners via the channel partner program have not been possible. The discontinuation of the Avira business products was also known – albeit not under the conditions stated in the e-mail that was sent to us, but in accordance with the Avira Product Lifecycle, which can be accessed online (and at least has not been adapted to date). The EoL for most products is (still) the 11. November 2022.

Whether sales partners and end customers on a (partial) reimbursement of the costs for already paid and now The e-mail we have received does not reveal that the licenses will be invalid soon. We have also checked with Avira in this regard and will supplement this message with the corresponding information if necessary.

Difficult times for the AV industry We are still waiting for Avira’s response to the question of whether the closure of the B2B area will continue with the takeover of the company by the Bahraini investor “Investcorp” in April 2020 could have to do with. Many AV software companies are troubled by the strong market change, which is partly due to the now quite good virus protection of Windows 10 preinstalled Defender. They have to develop new business fields and models – and compete with innovative companies that can often appear more agile without the “antivirus” block on their legs.

Before Avira, Symantec was already partially bought up: The US company Broadcom took over Symantec’s business division with antivirus and security products for companies for 10, $ 7 billion. There were job cuts of around 7 percent as part of a “restructuring and savings program”; in addition, unconfirmed rumors about “massive layoffs” made the rounds at Symantec Switzerland. Distributors, resellers and customers complained of poor support availability and massive delays in issuing software licenses. Symantec was not available for a statement at that time.

Update 10. 11. 20, 11: : Minor reformulations in view of the pending official statement (ovw)