Blue Coat Boosts Video Performance

Blue Coat has announced optimized video delivery for its Blue Coat ProxySG WAN optimizer. Blue Coat Optimized Video Delivery aims to improve the delivery of stored or streaming video by eliminating redundancies caused when individuals request the same video. Video usage has been steadily growing on the Internet. Telegeography, for example, estimates that streaming media now accounts for 18 percent of worldwide Internet traffic. Overall, video comprises 52 percent of worldwide Internet traffic.

Blue Coat Optimized Video Delivery, which is available as a software upgrade for the ProxySG appliance, supports live-splitting of streaming video. For example, if a company is streaming a live video of the CEO, and twenty-one employees at a branch office want to watch it, instead of sending twenty-one streams over the WAN, live-splitting sends one stream to the local ProxySG appliance at the branch office. The appliance then splits the stream into individual feeds for each viewer.

The ProxySG can also use its content filtering capabilities to set policies to distinguish between a corporation's own YouTube channels and other Internet-based business video channels from broader consumer and recreational offerings. The ProxySG supports three video transport protocols - Adobe Flash Real-Time Messaging Protocol (RTMP) and Microsoft's MMS- and RTSP-based streaming media protocols.

There's no question that corporations are investing in video both in their internal communications and in their outbound engagement with customers. ProxySG effectively provides much of the capabilities of multicast IP over a unicast network. This is particularly important in networks where IT may not control the end-to-end connection, such as the Internet or a public service. But for IT the bigger issue might be internal communications  using video calling. Its this area where Cisco, Skype and other have made a significant push. It's also the one area which won't be helped by the ProxySG, because with video calls there's no content to be cached.

According to a 2010 survey on Unified Communications, more than half of respondents have limited or full deployment of room-based videoconferencing. Desktop videoconferencing is also popular: 28 percent of respondents have deployed desktop videoconferencing to some users, and another 11 percent have full deployments. You can download the full report, "Unified Communications: Big Promise, Modest Movement" at InformationWeek Analytics. Registration is required. BlueCoat's Optimized Video Delivery software upgrade starts at $300 per device.