“Today’s distributed enterprises understand that fast, reliable access to information is critical to success, yet they struggle to efficiently deliver business applications to distributed users across the network,” said Brian NeSmith, president and chief executive officer, Blue Coat Systems. “The Blue Coat Application Delivery Network infrastructure offers unmatched visibility into the performance and security of business applications and web content across the network, providing the control required to contain costs, enhance productivity and respond quickly to changing business requirements.”

The Application Delivery Network: Visibility, Acceleration and Security

The Application Delivery Network works in conjunction with the packet-based network as an optimized infrastructure that provides the in-depth application intelligence required to securely and efficiently deliver business-critical applications. To effectively address the unique challenges of secure application delivery across a distributed enterprise, the Application Delivery Network integrates visibility, acceleration and security technologies.

The Blue Coat Application Delivery Network Infrastructure combines application monitoring, WAN optimization and Secure Web Gateway technologies to provide unmatched intelligence about the applications and Web content running across the distributed enterprise network.

“By adding Application Delivery Network solutions from Blue Coat, we can extract far more value from our network and ensure that business-critical applications and content perform optimally for our employees at any location around the world,” said Nectarios Lazaris, group chief information officer, for global design company Woods Bagot. “The combination of visibility, acceleration and security provides the means to effectively utilize and secure applications, content and communications anywhere on our network.”

Application Visibility: Discover, Classify and Prioritize

Centralized visibility into application traffic and Web content enables network managers to efficiently monitor application performance and realign network resources with business goals. Blue Coat® PacketShaper® appliances (Please refer to the attached release) classify more than 600 internal, external, customized, real-time and encrypted applications and monitor more than 100 application attributes. With this application intelligence, PacketShaper appliances can apply bandwidth and quality of service controls based on corporate IT policies. Blue Coat® ProxySG® appliances identify users and assess and classify Web content, including malicious threats. With this visibility into Web content, ProxySG appliances can apply a variety of controls based on policy.

Application Acceleration: Internal, External and Real-time Applications

By improving application response times, businesses can maximize the utilization of existing bandwidth, increase user productivity and enhance competitiveness. Utilizing application intelligence, Blue Coat ProxySG appliances accelerate centralized internal, external, encrypted, customized and video applications by applying protocol optimization, object and byte caching, compression and bandwidth management. ProxySG appliances substantially reduce bandwidth consumption on the Wide Area Network (WAN) or across an enterprise Internet gateway, resulting in lower operational expenses.

Application Security: Proactive Layers of Defense

By securing the delivery of business applications and Web content to users, enterprises can ensure proactive layers of defense to mitigate exposure to malware and malicious threats. Blue Coat ProxySG appliances assess Web content and applications in conjunction with Blue Coat WebFilter software and Blue Coat® ProxyAV™ appliances. Through its cloud-based WebPulse service, Blue Coat analyzes more than 150 million Web requests per day to build a comprehensive profile of Web content. This Web intelligence informs the Blue Coat layered defenses to prevent malicious threats from compromising application security or performance.

“The application delivery challenges confronting enterprises today, from decentralized workforces to a growing number of Web-based applications, are not easily solved because each enterprise has its own unique combination of applications, traffic and network architecture," said Cindy Borovick, research vice president for IDC’s Datacenter Networks service. “An application-based view of the network that provides both in-depth visibility into the applications running on the network and granular control over those applications offers enterprises a new way to ensure that the network is a key to achieving business success.”

Advancing the Application Delivery Network

Blue Coat has an aggressive strategy and solution roadmap for advancing the integration of the visibility, acceleration and security technologies at the heart of the Application Delivery Network. Today Blue Coat introduced its first product enhancements specifically directed at integrating these key Application Delivery Network technologies (see related press release issued today: Blue Coat Introduces Application Performance Dashboard and Ability to Identify Customer Enterprise Applications).

Global Service Capabilities: “Follow-the-Sun-Model”

The Blue Coat BlueTouch program offers the professional consulting services and on-the-ground support that enterprises need to design, deploy and manage the Application Delivery Network. From network assessment to deployment and management services, Blue Coat works with its customers to ensure their networks are aligned to their unique business requirements.

Blue Coat’s follow-the-sun service model is anchored by six support centers around the globe to further extend the value of the Application Delivery Network.

About Blue Coat Systems

Blue Coat Systems, Inc. is the technology leader in Application Delivery Networking. Blue Coat offers an Application Delivery Network Infrastructure that provides the visibility, acceleration and security required to optimize and secure the flow of information to any user, on any network, anywhere. This application intelligence enables enterprises to tightly align network investments with business requirements, speed decision making and secure business applications for long-term competitive advantage. For additional information, please visit www.bluecoat.com