This week in our “ADS Customers Speak” series we ask Blue Coat Systems customers to share their experiences with Blue Coat’s Proxy SG product. We’ve gotten some great and in many cases passionate feedback from customers of other vendors, and now it’s Blue Coat’s turn.
Adaptable is an apt word to describe Blue Coat Systems. Founded in 1996 as Web Appliance, it subsequently changed its name to CacheFlow, and finally to Blue Coat Systems in 2002. It rode the dot-com “everything is Web” wave, and when that wave crashed onto reality’s shore, it switched focus to “old fashioned enterprise applications rule”. The industry’s current wave, “turn all enterprise applications into web applications” returns it comfortably to its original roots. Along its journey two years ago Blue Coat added application acceleration and control to its ProxySG product, morphing it from a centralized to a hybrid centralized and distributed application delivery system (DADS) appliance.
Blue Coat is the only ADS vendor with a solution that addresses the intersection of traditional enterprise applications that operate exclusively within the firewall and new Internet-based applications that, although used within the enterprise, are served from outside the firewall.
The ProxySG moves up the acceleration value chain as customer needs and the traffic mix allows. The appliance first applies bandwidth management and in-line compression. It then adds protocol optimization for TCP, CIFS, HTTP, FTTPS and MAPI, followed by object caching (file-level) and/or dictionary compression (byte–level). These features are packaged in the traditional lineup of large appliances for the data center, small boxes for the remote office, and an SG client for the roaming user.
Blue Coat’s differentiation comes from its heritage handling public Internet traffic inside the enterprise. The initial product function was to cache popular Internet content so the enterprise could delay upgrading Internet access bandwidth as the employee Web use increased. When the dot-com wave crashed, Blue Coat ProxySG appliances were adapted to also shield enterprise from “bad” content and restrict where enterprise users could surf. In today’s market, the melding of security and acceleration, as well as the melding of centralized and distributed ADS solutions make for a powerful combination.
If you have deployed a Blue Coat ProxySG solution, tell us what you think. Does it live up to your expectations? What were your impressions? A simple “I like it”, “I have mixed feelings”, or “I hate it” response is fine–but if you have insight to share with the community, then talk all you want. You can post a reply to this blog using your name or anonymously.
If you are using another vendor’s product, your turn will come in a future blog.
