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Larry Chaffin

Why do I think Cisco a better choice over Blue Coat?

Could Cisco beat Blue Coat in a real world test?

By Larry Chaffin on Thu, 10/22/09 - 2:12am.

Being asked why I would take Cisco over Blue Coat in a choice of vendors and products has led me to the following reasons. I would hope that the marketing teams of both companies who take so much time out of their days posting to other blogs would take the same amount of time to post to this blog. We invite them to reply to this blog and shine some light on their products. (Disclosure: Pluto Networks is a Cisco Reseller for VoIP, but not the WAAS)

Five Reasons I Pick Cisco over Blue Coat

1) Cisco WAAS has a larger installed base and many of BlueCoat's ProxySG sales are clearly for secure web gateway--which is a different functionality--and not necessarily for WAN optimization.

2) Blue Coat's user manual warns of data loss issues - That observation is spooky all by itself, especially given the unknown true size of Blue Coat's customer base (they won't tell anyone how many customers are really using WAN optimization). While Cisco WAAS has a number of performance and scaling issues, at least data loss and data corruption isn't one that I've heard very much about.

3) Blue Coat ProxySG is harder to configure and deploy - The user manual for their ProxySG product is more than 3000 pages long. That can't be an easy product to configure. For a small limited-scale deployment, I'm looking for as simple a product as possible.

4) Cisco WAAS offers disk encryption while Blue Coat does not - Somehow, having my credit card numbers stored in the clear on hot-swappable disk drives just does not make me comfortable.

5) Cisco gives bigger discounts for WAAS - It's well-known that Cisco can and does subsidize their WAAS product line. Since Blue Coat is a smaller company, they probably can't subsidize WAN optimization as much from their other business revenues. You can even get WAAS at below the hardware cost if you really know how to pressure Cisco. In the possible event that the deployment goes bad, the financial investment you made is minimal.

 

About Putting Realism Into Your Network

Larry Chaffin Ph.D is the Chief Executive Officer/Chairman and founder of Pluto Networks, a Consulting and VAR partner specializing in WAN acceleration, VoIP, WLAN, telepresence and security.

Pluto Networks is a Riverbed reseller. Pluto was previously a Cisco reseller but in June, 2010, ended its reseller relationship with the company and is no longer a Cisco channel partner.

Pluto Networks specializes in the needs of small, large and enterprise companies by always giving them a great ROI on the products they sell. Pluto Networks has a presence in 23 countries around the world enabling all of its consultants to be virtual. Larry was a Judge at Interop for the Best of Interop Awards for 2009.

Larry has also co-authored all of the books listed below:

Managing Cisco Secure Networks, Skype Me, Practical VOIP Security, Configuring Check Point NGX VPN-1/Firewall-1,Configuring Juniper Networks NetScreen & SSG Firewalls,Essential Computer Security: Everyone's Guide to Email, Internet, and Wireless Security, How to Cheat at Microsoft Vista Administration, Microsoft Vista for IT Security Professionals, Asterisk Hacking, 2008 VoIP and Video Conferencing, Infosecurity 2008 Threat Analysis and author of Building a VOIP Network with Nortel's MS5100, along with co-authoring/ghost writing eleven other technology books for VIOP, WLAN, security and optical technologies. Larry is currently working on a follow up to Building a VoIP network with Nortel's MCS 5100 Book as well as new books on Cisco Telepresence Networks, Practical VoIP case studies and WAN Acceleration with Riverbed.

Larry also has more than 29 vendor certifications and has been working on many others. Larry has been a principal architect around the world in 22 countries for many Fortune 100 companies designing VoIP, security, wireless and optical networks. He has expanded over time also to include application acceleration. Larry is working with worldwide company now out of Asia as a Special Assistant to the CEO and CIO as they go through organizational and network changes, helping them with strategic advice from his years of experience.

Pluto Networks is a channel partner of, LifeSize, Riverbed, Call Copy, Fastsoft and Symantec.

 

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