Avocent Selects Blue Coat for Application Acceleration and Web Security at Branch Offices
2 January 2007
Blue Coat(R) Systems (Nasdaq: BCSI), the leader in secure content and application delivery, today announced that Avocent(R) Corporation (Nasdaq: AVCT), a leading provider of IT infrastructure management solutions for enterprise data centers, small/medium businesses and branch offices, has selected Blue Coat SG appliances to accelerate applications across its Wide Area Network (WAN) and provide security and control of Web content and applications for branch offices. The Avocent deployment reflects a growing trend towards local Internet access for remote sites around the world, requiring the branch office to address both application acceleration and Web security.
Like many organizations, Avocent has consolidated its servers and applications in a centralized data center, creating significant challenges for application response time in branch offices. Blue Coat SG appliances with MACH5 application acceleration technology apply multiple techniques to reduce latency and bandwidth use for distributed applications, including internally hosted or outsourced applications utilizing SSL encrypted communications.
Branch Offices Are "Direct to the 'Net"
Avocent provides direct Internet access to its branch offices and no longer backhauls Internet traffic across the WAN to its corporate headquarters. Backhauling Internet traffic would require twice the current MPLS bandwidth at the corporate headquarters. Now with direct Internet connections at each branch office, the company needs to secure and control local Web activity, protect against malware, enforce corporate policies and legal requirements and manage network resources. The same Blue Coat SG appliances provide an integrated platform for acceleration, security and policy control.
Originally, Avocent had two separate evaluations -- one for branch office Web security and the other for application acceleration. Only Blue Coat provided a solution to combine both in a single appliance with integrated policy and management.
Combining Acceleration and Web Security
"With our model of consolidated enterprise applications and decentralized Internet access, we needed to find a solution that would both accelerate business-critical applications and provide centrally managed web protection and control at each branch office," said Dan Tice, director of global information technology for Avocent. "Blue Coat appliances enable us to accelerate applications in branch offices while also providing the security and control we require there."
The MACH5 patent-pending framework of acceleration technologies is designed to accelerate all key enterprise applications, including: Web and secure Web applications (SSL), file services, email/Microsoft Exchange and live streaming or on-demand video. Since the MACH5 technology is integrated with the Blue Coat platform, it enables organizations to manage all of their user/application interactions -- to stop undesirable applications, throttle less important applications and accelerate critical applications, even when encrypted within SSL.
SSL encrypted sessions represent a significant and growing amount of Avocent's business-critical traffic. This traffic includes internal applications communicating using SSL encryption, as well as a growing number of outsourced applications, including its sales force automation system. All of these external applications must communicate with enterprise users through the use of SSL over the public Internet. With MACH5 technology, Blue Coat appliances are the only solution that can control and accelerate all SSL traffic.
In initial testing, a commonly used 10 MB file was sent between Huntsville, AL and Sunrise, FL, a distance of some 850 miles. Without the SG appliance, the file took four minutes to transfer between locations. With the SG appliance, the file transfer took only ten seconds.
"Branch offices have been facing an application performance problem that is rapidly also becoming a security and control problem as branch offices connect directly to the Internet," said Steve Mullaney, vice president of marketing for Blue Coat Systems. "Performance and security are inextricably linked. It all comes down to having a complete understanding of users and content or applications and the interactions between them and the ability to be able to both secure and accelerate.
About Blue Coat Systems
Blue Coat secures Web communications and accelerates business applications across the distributed enterprise. Blue Coat's family of appliances and client-based solutions -- deployed in branch offices, Internet gateways, end points, and data centers -- provide intelligent points of policy-based control enabling IT organizations to optimize security and accelerate performance between users and applications. Blue Coat has installed more than 30,000 appliances worldwide and is ranked #1 by IDC in the Secure Content and Application Delivery market. Blue Coat is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, and can be reached at (408) 220-2200 or http://www.bluecoat.com .
FORWARD LOOKING STATEMENTS: The statements contained in this press release that are not purely historical are forward-looking statements, including statements regarding Blue Coat Systems' expectations, beliefs, intentions or strategies regarding the future, and including statements regarding the capabilities and expected performance of Blue Coat Systems' products. All forward-looking statements included in this press release are based upon information available to Blue Coat Systems as of the date hereof, and Blue Coat Systems assumes no obligation to update any such forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, which could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected. These and other risks relating to Blue Coat Systems' business are set forth in Blue Coat Systems' most recently filed Form 10-Q for the quarter ended January 31, 2006 and Form 10-K for the year ended April 30, 2005, and other reports filed from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
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Source: prnewswire
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