KVM switch and network infrastructure management firm Avocent recently signed on with Blue Coat Systems to make working among the company's more than 25 global locations more efficient and secure.

Dan Tice, director of global IT, says he started his search for technology to improve application performance across the WAN when he realized there was "a user perception that things were moving too slowly."

"We realized the same files were being repetitively moved across the WAN and needed to make it more efficient, but we didn't want to have people using our T-1s for the wrong content," Tice explains.

The combined need for acceleration and security is what drew him to Blue Coat Systems' SG appliances and Multiprotocol Accelerated Caching Hierarchy (MACH5) technology. Blue Coat Proxy SG appliances are positioned between users on a network and the Internet and serve as a central point of control over Internet traffic. A termination point for Web communications on the network, the appliance can apply numerous policy-based controls to Web traffic and requests before delivering content to users.

MACH5 technology is part of the operating system of Blue Coat's Proxy SG appliance. The technology addresses five areas: bandwidth management, protocol optimization, object caching, byte caching and compression, and will augment the appliances, which perform Web filtering, spyware detection and secure content scanning.

Tice says the appliances have been working mostly at content filtering, for close to two months now, and he plans to put the MACH5 technology to use following that. He says the technology will help acceleration traffic and prohibit access, while also being transparent to the end user -- meaning end users can work as they always have, but enjoy better performance from the network and applications.

"Blue Coat enables us to keep people from using our T-1s for the wrong reasons, and essentially they kept the bad stuff off and will make the good stuff run faster," Tice says.

Whitepapers

• Gene Kim's Practical Steps to Mitigate Virtualization Security Risks
• Monitoring and Managing App Performance
• Monitoring and Managing VoIP
• SNMP Monitoring: One Critical Component to Network Management
• SNMP Monitoring: One Critical Component to Network Management
• A Modern Approach to On-Demand Email and Data Security

View more NETWORK MANAGEMENT whitepapers

Webcasts

• Key Considerations for a Successful 802.11n Deployment
• Best Practices for Deploying WAN Optimization for Disaster Recovery
• Tips and Techniques for Remote Data Backup and Delivery
• WAN Optimization Landscape
• Lowering the Cost of Email Archives
• The High-Touch Remote Helpdesk: Centralized Support for the Decentralized Organization

View more NETWORK MANAGEMENT webcasts

Special Reports

• Network World Executive GUide: The Virtualization Equation
• Application Performance Management Executive Guide
• Executive Guide: Building a Service Oriented Architecture
• Optimizing Your Network Management Strategy for Today's Economy
• Get More From Your WAN
• Executive Guide: Storage Heats Up

View more NETWORK MANAGEMENT special reports