Blue Coat Systems

Blue Coat Proxy and PacketShaper appliances provide a holistic approach for:

• WAN Optimization
• Secure Gateway Proxies
• Content Filtering

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 for all users and applications.

In June of 2008, Blue Coat acquired Packeteer, our chosen solution for WAN optimization and application acceleration solutions. Packeteer products, training, support and maintenance are still available through Carolina Advanced Digital.

Go to Blue Coat’s website or see white papers from Blue Coat.

RECENT NEWS:

4/17/12 – Blue Coat announced the release of PacketShaper version 9, which introduces the industry’s first network-, application- and content-level visibility and control for IPv6 “shadow networks” which have, up until now, run undetected on existing corporate IPv4 networks. In addition, the new software enables scalable performance of up to 8 Gigabits per second (Gbps) to meet increased network demands with more video and other rich media, large software downloads and other network application traffic. Read the press release.

2/13/12 – Blue Coat has been positioned in the Leaders quadrant of the Magic Quadrant for WAN Optimization Controllers by research and advisory firm Gartner, Inc. Read the press release here.

10/10/11 – Blue Coat announced that the Blue Coat WebPulse collaborative defense proactively protected its 75 million users from the latest attack launched by Shnakule, the largest malware network on the Internet. Read the press release. Download the white paper on WebPulse.

9/7/11 - New PacketShaper Software

PacketShaper 8.7.1 is now available for download. Updates include: improved GUI, new Model Tree feature (automatically groups related applications and web category classes in a logical hierarchy), latest classification updates for CIFS, H.323, SSL, Skype, and HTTP, and latest stability and performance improvements. PacketShaper 8.7.1 is available at no charge for any PacketShaper customer with a current support agreement. It is compatible with PacketShaper 900, 1400, 1700, 3500, 7500, 10000, and 12000 models. Download PacketShaper 8.7.1 software and Release Notes.

New PacketShaper 12000 Upgrades

A runaway hit since its release in December 2010, the PacketShaper 12000 controls 1+ Gbps links at enterprises and institutions. New upgrades include:

10,000 Class License: Thanks to performance enhancements made possible by the new PacketShaper 8.7.1 software release, PacketShaper 12000 can now be licensed to control up to 10,000 classes (a 2x improvement over 8.6.x), making it the perfect platform to manage multiple remote sites that backhaul traffic through the data center.

New Fiber LEMs: PacketShaper 8.7.1 software also adds support for new fiber-optic LEMs (1000BASE-LX, 10GBASE-SR, and 10GBASE-LR), and offers the new option of Direct Standby on a LEM

New Intelligence Center 3.2.1.1

The central reporting solution for PacketShaper, IntelligenceCenter 3.2.1.1 (released 4 August 2011) features new reports, including VOIP performance, class and link utilization, and network efficiency, plus handy features like business hours reporting and the ability to configure and schedule consolidated reports. In addition, under-the-hood enhancements ease the installation and upgrade process, and integrate the latest stability and performance improvements. Existing customers can upgrade to IC 3.2.1.1 at no charge.

7/8/11 – Blue Coat released a Mid-Year Security report that shows the latest trends around web security. Download it now.

6/6/11 -  Broadband-Testing, an independent network testing facility, has completed a report commissioned by Blue Coat that compares a Blue Coat MACH5 WAN Optimization appliance to a Riverbed Steelhead appliance. The report shows that Blue Coat beats Riverbed head to head. Here’s a recap:

Traditional WAN Optimization: Blue Coat and Riverbed TIE. For traditional file access over CIFS, FTP Backup, email and similar bulk data operations, Blue Coat and Riverbed optimized on average approximately 10x versus the baseline – a TIE.

Web Applications : Blue Coat Wins, 1.5x-10x Better than Riverbed in Warm Cases. They tested web applications – HTML front ends with HTTP and SSL transport – using Microsoft SharePoint. In cold operations – the first time data was seen – the vendors were relatively even. In warm runs, Blue Coat was 1.5-10x better than Riverbed

Cloud-based Applications : Blue Coat Wins, Optimizing Cloud apps 3x-93x better than the Baseline and Riverbed. Riverbed could not optimize the traffic at all in this configuration, where a single branch office device was pointed to the cloud application.

Video: Blue Coat Clearly Beats Riverbed, 500 to 20. In a test of on-demand video files for Microsoft Windows Media Server, Blue Coat delivered video to 500 simultaneous users, while leaving 65-70% of the bandwidth of a 1.5 Mbps link available for other applications. Riverbed max’d the link at 100% with just 20 users – no room for other applications. Riverbed started creating errors with 50 users.