“Blue Coat has consistently delivered leading edge technology at the Internet gateway and branch office to ensure that enterprises can secure their networks and implement policies without compromising application performance,” said Bethany Mayer, senior vice president of worldwide marketing at Blue Coat Systems. “We believe being positioned in the leaders quadrant further validates the focused execution of Blue Coat’s vision to deliver the security and application acceleration tools that allow enterprises to effectively control their networks.”

The report positions vendors based on their ability to execute and completeness of vision. According to Gartner, “The Completeness of Vision axis captures the technical quality and completeness of the product and organizational characteristics, such as how well the vendor understands this market, its history of innovation, its marketing and sales strategies, and its geographic presence.”

Gartner has also placed Blue Coat in the leaders quadrant of the Magic Quadrant for WAN Optimization Controllers, 2007.[ii]

To access a complimentary copy of the report, please visit: http://www.bluecoat.com/landing/gartner-swg-2008  or follow the link from the Blue Coat home page.

Blue Coat ProxySG appliances can flexibly enforce policies on content, users, applications and protocols while increasing application performance at the Internet gateway and over the wide area network. The highly scalable ProxySG allows customers to simplify their IT infrastructures by reducing the number of appliances required to secure and control the network.

“We expect average market growth rates to be in the 25 to 35 percent range for the next two years,” says Peter Firstbrook and Lawrence Orans in the Magic Quadrant for Secure Web Gateway, 2008 report. “This growth will be fueled by increased penetration of dedicated SWG devices, incremental feature revenue and the impact of appliance-based products replacing software.

Blue Coat has more than 15,000 customers in more than 150 countries worldwide. Today, 81 percent of the Fortune Global 500 and the 10 largest enterprises in the U.S. have deployed Blue Coat ProxySG appliances to secure, control and accelerate their networks.

About the Magic Quadrant

The Magic Quadrant is copyrighted 2008 by Gartner, Inc. and is reused with permission. The Magic Quadrant is a graphical representation of a marketplace at and for a specific time period. It depicts Gartner’s analysis of how certain vendors measure against criteria for that marketplace, as defined by Gartner. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in the Magic Quadrant, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors placed in the “Leaders” quadrant. The Magic Quadrant is intended solely as a research tool, and is not meant to be a specific guide to action. Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

 About Blue Coat Systems

Blue Coat secures Web communications and accelerates business applications across the distributed enterprise. Blue Coat’s family of appliances and client-based solutions – deployed in branch offices, Internet gateways, end points, and data centers – provide intelligent points of policy-based control enabling IT organizations to optimize security and accelerate performance between users and applications. Blue Coat has installed more than 40,000 appliances worldwide. Blue Coat is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, and can be reached at (408) 220-2200 or www.bluecoat.com .