Blue Coat ships SG Client to extend security

Blue Coat Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq: BCSI), the leader in secure content and application delivery, announced the shipping of SG Client for application delivery to endpoint devices used by remote or mobile enterprise users. SG Client is the first integrated client, designed to enable companies and organizations to extend security, policy control and application acceleration to the endpoint, regardless of its location.

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.

SG Client currently focuses on acceleration—even within existing VPN sessions—while subsequent versions will add more security, policy control and performance monitoring capabilities. Many of these technologies already exist in Blue Coat products. Currently, SG Client incorporates protocol optimization for CIFS and TCP as well as client-side object caching and compression. Other protocol optimizations will be added in later versions this year.

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.

Initially, SG Client is designed as a thick client that is installed on enterprise-managed computers. SG Client can be deployed and centrally managed through existing SG appliances running the new version of operating software or Blue Coat’s Director product.

As with Blue Coat® SG™ appliances for branch and remote offices, the SG Client architecture is designed to accelerate a full range of business-critical application traffic and provide appropriate levels of security and control—at the critical application layer. SG Client incorporates portions of Blue Coat’s patent-pending MACH5 application acceleration technology, which provides protocol optimization, object and byte caching and compression—to speed applications and content and reduce bandwidth usage—in accordance with enterprise policy. Additional MACH5 technologies will be added in subsequent versions.

Next Steps
Subsequent versions of SG Client will add the ability for on-the-fly, non-persistent installations on both managed and unmanaged devices, such as employee’s home computers, Internet kiosks in airports or hotels and computers in partner organizations. In addition, SG Client provides organizations the option to use a VPN integrated with the client software. Other additions will include centralized client performance monitoring, content controls, host integrity checking, and more.

The road map and direction for SG Client will focus on offering end-to-end application delivery, combining security, policy control and acceleration. Blue Coat will integrate some of its existing client technologies designed to protect the remote client and information residing on it during a secure session. SG Client will be able to enforce corporate policies by controlling content and applications, protecting against spyware and other forms of malware and performing appropriate URL filtering. Since SG Client is designed to provide application control, data can be protected, for instance, with active information controls to prevent printing, saving, copying or “print screening.”

“SG Client represents a major step to extend WAN optimization to individual remote users within an integrated framework for application delivery,” said Mark Elliott, vice president product management, Blue Coat Systems. “Organizations have been able to control application performance and security inside their own networks, but once users are outside they have been beyond the reach of that control. With Blue Coat SG Client, organizations will be able to seamlessly extend application security and performance to remote employees anywhere.”

Price and Availability
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 US pricing ranges from $85 per user to as low as $20 per user.

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 www.bluecoat.com.