Blue Coat Systems ( ), founded in 1996, is a
publicly-held company based in Sunnyvale, California. 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 for all users and applications.
Blue Coat has installed more than 8,000 customers worldwide and is
ranked number one by IDC in the Secure Content and Application
Delivery market.
Blue Coat appliances and software technology help IT organizations
secure Web communications and accelerate delivery of business
applications for users across the distributed enterprise. -
including Internet gateways, branch offices, data centers, and even
individual end points.
Products
The Blue Coat ProxySG appliance family runs the purpose-built SGOS
operating system as a
proxy server for 15 protocols, including
HTTP,
FTP,
SSL (forward and reverse),
CIFS,
MAPI,
Telnet,
SOCKS,
P2P,
Microsoft Media Services,
RTSP,
QuickTime,
AOL IM,
Yahoo IM,
MSN Messenger, and TCP-Tunnel. ProxySG
appliances include a policy engine for control and security. Blue
Coat ProxySG appliances' MACH5 (Multi-Protocol Accelerated Caching
Hierarchy) technology accelerates
WAN traffic through
bandwidth management, protocol
optimization (e.g.,
CIFS proxy), object
caching, byte caching (of file components),
and
data compression .
The Blue Coat ProxyAV appliance family integrates with ProxySG
appliances via an extended
ICAP+ connection
intended for enterprise gateway virus scanning with low average
latency. Blue Coat ProxyAV
stops
spyware as well, and supports scanning
engines from
Kaspersky Lab,
McAfee,
Sophos, Ahn Lab, and
Panda Software.
The Blue Coat ProxyRA appliance family provides encrypted,
on-demand, agentless access to Web and non-Web applications .
Blue Coat WebFilter is a
content
filtering service that categorizes
domain names, directories and
IP addresses for policy enforcement and security.
Blue Coat’s ‘Dynamic Real-Time Rating (DRTR)’, uses
artificial intelligence to attempt
to categorize new Web pages the first time a user requests
access.
WinProxy is a desktop
proxy server
which allows users to share an internet connection, similar to
Microsoft's
Internet Connection Sharing.
This product is End-of-Sale at this point .
K9 Web Protection is desktop-based
content control software
which uses Blue Coat WebFilter to provide homes with
Internet filtering. This is free software offered
by Blue Coat to anyone looking to protect web access from their
home or business networks .
Software history
Blue Coat
appliances use a purpose-built microkernel operating system called ‘SGOS’, which
traces its lineage to the Thoth research OS created at the
University of
Waterloo
, Canada in 1976. Thoth is generally
considered the first of the real-time message passing operating
systems, whose descendants include
QNX and
V-Kernel, though
KeyKOS more rightly deserves this claim.
Thoth evolved into the
Port OS and language
between 1982 and 1990, which produced
Hayes LANstep in the
early 1990’s. In 1996
CacheFlow (later renamed
Blue
Coat Systems) created the
CacheOS to drive
proxy server Web acceleration appliances. This
microkernel architecture was chosen for its process efficiency. In
2002, a policy engine was added and the OS name changed to
SGOS (for “secure gateway”). SGOS’ hardened architecture
are in no way based on
Microsoft
Windows,
Unix or
Linux
code - however, SGOS documentation includes licensing information
for several Open Source projects, including
FreeBSD operating system; also, Blue Coat actively
contributes to FreeBSD. SGOS later passed certifications from
NIAP Evaluation Assurance Level 2,
FIPS 140-2, and
ICSA.
Financial history
Blue Coat was founded in 1996 as CacheFlow, with Web acceleration
from its
Web cache as the primary
offering. CacheFlow went public in November 1999 at $26 per share
and closed at $126 the first day. CacheFlow was among the top-ten
price jumps in IPO history. In 2001 the telecom recession caused
CacheFlow to downsize and redesign its products. In the summer of
2002 the company changed its name to ‘Blue Coat Systems, Inc.’, and
added policy control and security capability to Blue Coat
appliances. In late 2006 Blue Coat went back to its roots in
accelerating applications, and added a focus on WAN Optimization, a
fast growing market segment, and by mid 2007 gained enough market
share to be ranked 1st in market share of WAN Application Delivery
by IDC.
Legal troubles
Blue Coat Systems was charged on Nov 12 2008 of stock option
backdating by its former CFO Robert P. Verheecke . Without
admitting or denying the charge, Blue Coat agreed to settle the
charges by consenting to a permanent injunction against any future
violations of certain provisions of the federal securities laws.
"We are pleased to conclude this matter with the SEC and to
continue our focus on execution and serving the needs of our
customers," said Brian NeSmith, Blue Coat's president and chief
executive officer .
Acquisitions
References
- IDC
- Blue
Coat SGOS ProxyEdition data sheet
- Blue
Coat ProxyRA Data Sheet
- Blue
Coat WebFilter Data Sheet
- Blue Coat Winproxy
- K9 Spread the Word
- Thoth OS
- http://www.bluecoat.com/news/pr/3227
- IDC Market Share Numbers 1H07 WAN Application
Delivery Market
- Blue Coat Systems and former CFO settle charges of
stock option backdating
- Blue Coat Systems press release
- Blue Coat Completes Acquisition of NetCache Assets
from Network Appliance
- Press release - Blue Coat Completes Acquisition of
Packeteer June 9, 2008
- Blue Coat Slashes Staff, Buys S7 Services
Company
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