abednarz
Executive Editor

Blue Coat restructures, strikes a deal

Opinion
Nov 10, 20092 mins

Also, Crescendo Networks gets into Twitter

Blue Coat acquired S7 Software Solutions as part of its restructuring plan. Also, Crescendo Networks is getting into Twitter.

Blue Coat Systems last week unveiled a restructuring plan and announced its $5.25 million acquisition of S7 Software Solutions, an IT research and development firm based in Bangalore, India.

The combination of the S7 Software acquisition and restructuring program is intended to enable the company to more cost effectively develop new products and pursue new routes to market, Blue Coat says. “Together these actions will allow us to invest for future growth while aligning the company’s cost structure to its current revenue level, which should drive higher and more consistent levels of profitability,” said CFO Gordon Brooks in a statement.

The restructuring plan calls for a 10% workforce reduction; the closure of three small facilities in Latvia, New Jersey and The Netherlands; reorganization of sales and marketing and other departments; shifting engineering positions from Sunnyvale, Calif., and Austin, Texas, to its other locations; and consolidating research and development work at four vertically-focused sites.

In other WAN optimization and application acceleration news:

* Crescendo Networks debuted a new management appliance designed to monitor its application delivery controllers. A unique feature of the AppBeat SC Service Controller is the option to send monitoring notifications and alerts via Twitter if there’s a problem with application delivery or networking, for instance, that IT needs to know about.

* Application management vendor Compuware this week completed its $295 million acquisition of Gomez, which specializes in monitoring and managing Web site and Web application performance. The combined company will be able to provide IT pros with a unified view of application performance across the enterprise and Internet, along with troubleshooting and resolution capabilities, company executives say.

Customer AutoTrader.com is one fan of the union: “We use Compuware to gauge responsiveness from inside our enterprise and Gomez to track performance and availability from our customers’ point of view, wherever they are on the Internet. We’re excited by the vision of integrating the two,” said Cliff Goolsby, senior director of architecture, engineering and systems assurance.

abednarz

Ann Bednarz is the executive editor of Network World. Ann is a longtime IT journalist and has spent 26 years writing and editing for Network World, where she has worked as a news reporter, managed product testing and reviews, and developed features and how-to articles for an audience of network professionals and data center managers. Over the last two years, she has conceived and edited award-winning content for Network World that includes 2025 Jesse H. Neal Award finalists, 2025 Azbee Award regional winners and national finalists, and 2024 Eddie & Ozzie Award finalists.

Ann holds a bachelor’s degree in architecture and spent the early part of her journalism career writing about architectural design and construction. In her free time, she keeps those skills alive through DIY projects.

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