Blue Coat reduces WAN backhaul traffic

Stephen Withers
Thursday, 10 November 2011 07:28

Blue Coat's Cloud-Connector option for its WAN optimisation appliances can significantly reduce backhaul traffic from branch offices, the company claims.

According to Blue Coat officials, as much as two-thirds of WAN traffic is incoming Internet traffic. This adds to the total cost, and affects the performance of business applications, including cloud applications whose traffic must traverse the WAN.

Blue Coat's Cloud-Connector for MACH5 WAN optimisation appliances and virtual appliances allows networks to be configured so that branch office Internet traffic is automatically forwarded to the Blue Coat Cloud Service instead of being routed to the corporate data centre for filtering.

This arrangement, the company claims, reduces bandwidth requirements and speeds the delivery of cloud and data centre applications. Other benefits of the MACH5 system include live stream-splitting and on-demand video caching.

"Blue Coat Next Generation WAN optimisation enables companies to transform their existing networks and drive optimisation beyond the traditional Wide Area Network," said Greg Singh, systems engineering manager at Blue Coat Australia and New Zealand. "The internet is the fundamental technology connection point for any business. Our Cloud-Connector enables enterprises to re-architect private WAN designs to safely embrace internet connectivity and reduce costs, enable faster cloud performance and scalably deliver video - while also optimising traditional consolidated internal applications across the WAN."

Cloud-Connector will be added to the MACH5 software on November 22 at no extra charge to customers. Blue Coat Cloud Service is a chargeable service.