Blue Coat Intros Software

SUNNYVALE, Calif. -- Blue Coat(R) Systems (NASDAQ:BCSI), the leader in secure content and application delivery, today announced a major software upgrade for its family of SG appliances for WAN optimization. The software release makes WAN optimization ready for mainstream enterprise deployments by enabling it to integrate with existing network infrastructure and operations, provide expanded clustering and failover options, operate with high levels of security and offer the industry's only integrated WAN optimization client for mobile or micro-branch employees.

"The strategic position of branch offices closest to the end customer coupled with the continuation of centralizing servers, storage and applications is making WAN Application Delivery essential for most enterprises," said Cindy Borovick, program director for IDC's datacenter networks. "At the same time, there have been critical factors limiting wide-scale deployments such as integration with existing network infrastructures."

Seamless Network Integration

Past WAN optimization solutions have presented integration issues with existing networks. Previous solutions prevented or constrained important network management and traffic assessment tools, such as those based on Cisco's NetFlow, from operating across the WAN. In addition, WAN optimization solutions often interfered with the operation of certain firewall implementations, and policy-based routing schemes. Blue Coat SG appliances now are the first in the industry to provide both transparent and translucent tunnel modes to preserve all Layer 4 and routing information and make it available to network management tools, firewalls and routing schemes. In addition, SG appliances now provide new levels of flexibility for a wide variety of network topologies, including automatic configuration for combinations of varying WAN links using asymmetric routing.

Blue Coat Systems Inc.