* Blueprint encompasses application monitoring, WAN optimization and Web security
Blue Coat Systems last week aired its vision for providing infrastructure gear that can optimize and secure business applications, content and communications. Its lineup combines application monitoring, WAN optimization and Web security technologies to create what Blue Coat dubs the Application Delivery Network.
Blue Coat’s products fit together to provide the visibility, acceleration and security that companies need to deliver applications to distributed users across the network, says Brian NeSmith, the company’s president and CEO.
The visibility comes from Blue Coat’s PacketShaper appliances (gained in last year’s acquisition of Packeteer), which can classify more than 600 applications and monitor more than 100 application attributes. With this kind of visibility into application traffic and Web content, IT teams can more effectively align network resources with business priorities and automate a variety of controls based on corporate IT policies, Blue Coat says.
“Being able to see, understand and monitor what’s on your network is increasingly a challenge for people, especially given how simple and easy it is for someone to start up a new application or a new server,” NeSmith says.
Application acceleration features are built into Blue Coat’s ProxySG appliances, which can apply protocol optimization, object and byte caching, compression and bandwidth management to improve application response times. The ProxySG appliances also offer application security; they can assess Web content and applications in conjunction with Blue Coat’s WebFilter software and ProxyAV appliances to mitigate exposure to malware and malicious threats.
“The security capabilities give you the layered control to drive policy about what you want to accept and not, and to deal with the various types of threats from malware,” NeSmith says.
Blue Coat’s roadmap calls for continuing to integrate its visibility, acceleration and security wares. To that end, the vendor also announced an upgraded version of its IntelligenceCenter software and a new software release for its PacketShaper appliances.
New to IntelligenceCenter (Blue Coat’s dedicated monitoring and management product) is a real-time dashboard that shows enterprise application performance at any location for distributed users. IT administrators can use the dashboard to keep tabs on application response time and, using PacketShaper, reassign bandwidth or adjust prioritization levels if response time falls below an acceptable level. The dashboard also can help IT track how applications are used and assist with troubleshooting and resource planning, Blue Coat says.
New in the latest PacketShaper software release is the ability to identify custom applications (in addition to the 600 off-the-shelf applications PacketShaper already recognizes). With this capability, companies can define specific custom applications and monitor their performance alongside packaged applications.
Blue Coat’s application performance dashboard is included in version 2.1 of IntelligenceCenter and will be available later this month as a free upgrade for existing IntelligenceCenter customers with service contracts. The next release of software for PacketShaper appliances, version 8.4, will be available later this month at no cost to existing customers.
