Blue Coat ships wan optimisation client

Secure content vendor Blue Coat Systems has shipped out its SG Client for application delivery to endpoint devices used by remote or mobile enterprise users.

SG Client is an integrated client, designed to enable companies and organisations to extend security, policy control and application acceleration to the endpoint, regardless of its location.

Leigh Costin, product marketing manager Asia-Pacific Blue Coat believes since mobile and remote users now comprise a significant and growing portion of all employees, a unified platform that extends application performance and security control to individual endpoints is an emerging IT requirement.

“The Blue Coat SG Client solution is fairly applicable to most corporations. All that is required is to have a mobile working population that is under corporate management. There are some verticals are likely first movers - resources, finance, insurance and transport to name a few,” he said.

SG Client currently focuses on acceleration—even within existing VPN sessions—while subsequent versions will add more security, policy control and performance monitoring capabilities, said Costin.

The policy-based acceleration in SG Client enables granular control over which traffic gets acceleration and when. Initial trials show performance increases of up to 35 times. In one deployment, a 10 megabyte Power Point file took 104 seconds to download without the benefit SG Client but only three seconds with SG Client enabled. The built-in Real Time Performance Indicator graphically displays acceleration results.

SG Client works with the new version of software for Blue Coat SG appliances, also announced today (please see separate press release). Both are scheduled to ship with general availability within the next week. SG Client pricing ranges from US$85 per user to US$20 per user.

“As the WAN optimisation mobile user is a new market with relatively few, if any, competitors. Blue Coat believes it has offered a suitable pricing structure for our channel partners, including a number of service opportunities that would be a part of mobile user rollout, including expansion of infrastructure, SOE enhancement and policy development,” he said.

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