Forefront TMG being dropped by Microsoft?

Forefront Threat Management Gateway (TMG), the successor product to Microsoft ISA Server, appears to be headed for the scrapheap.

MVP Deb Shinder has reported on isaserver.org that Microsoft has indicated to Gartner that it "is not going to be shipping another full version release of TMG" and that Microsoft does not intend in future to compete with other vendors in this space.

Nothing official has been announced directly by Microsoft on the future of TMG. Access to the Gartner report itself cost $1995 and if you're really curious you can download it here, but there is little reason to doubt Deb Shinder's report and it appears that the future of TMG is bleak.

The advantage for Sysadmins in using TMG was how well it integrated with other Microsoft products. For example, securely publishing OWA with TMG was a breeze compared to setting OWA up to work securely with some third party product.