Blue Coat Enables Enterprises to Manage NCAA March Madness Drain on Network and Internet Capacity

Blue Coat Enables Enterprises to Manage NCAA March Madness Drain on Network and Internet Capacity

Solution Prevents Enterprise Networks From Being 'Dunked' With Widespread Employee Viewing of Online Basketball Video Feeds

SUNNYVALE, Calif., March 22 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Blue Coat(R) Systems (NASDAQ:BCSI), the leader in secure content and application delivery, today announced that its family of appliances can be used by enterprises in maintaining full functionality of enterprise networks and Internet connections despite the anticipation of widespread employee attempts to view online video feeds of the NCAA March Madness basketball game playoffs while at work.

The Blue Coat solution enables enterprises to throttle or block access to the games on a granular basis; apply bandwidth management to ensure that business-critical traffic has priority over game viewing; locally cache on-demand video or split a single stream of live video to alleviate the drain on an enterprise's Internet connection; and monitor the load and viewing activity to determine whether special controls need to be put in place.

"While March Madness is an exciting time for sports fans, it can mean a disaster for enterprise networks," said Steve Mullaney, vice president of marketing for Blue Coat Systems. "Our appliance solution gives enterprises complete flexibility and a fine-grained level of control for meeting a full-court press of online video viewing by employees and ensuring that business-critical traffic remains unimpaired."

Prioritizing Network Activity

Blue Coat appliances can be set to prioritize the traffic for certain applications, users, groups or type of traffic to ensure that business-critical traffic can flow unimpeded while other applications receive lesser bandwidth. Controls can be adjusted according to the time of day or a wide range of other parameters to provide a high level of flexibility.

Playing Defense

The Blue Coat appliance solution can also block or regulate the amount of traffic based on the site from which it comes, the type of media or the bandwidth required for the media. In addition, it can block or regulate based on user, group and other parameters.

Lessen the Load

Blue Coat's video capabilities can greatly lessen the load video places on an enterprise Internet connection. The appliance can take a single stream of live Internet video and split it into multiple streams for users inside the corporate network. Rather than downloading a live stream of video for each employee, the appliance can download a single live stream and then split it as necessary for each internal viewer. On-demand video can be stored (cached) locally on the appliance rather than downloaded for each person requesting it.

Play-by-Play Monitoring

Through reporting and its real-time Reporter Dashboard, Blue Coat can provide an up-to-the-minute view of enterprise Web activity, alerting administrators or managers to potential problems. An enterprise, for instance, could take a "wait and see" approach to the anticipated video demands and put appropriate controls in place as necessary. They could also make adjustments to existing controls according to real events or activity.

Blue Coat's appliances have the unique ability to strike the optimal balance between user empowerment and IT control. Because a proxy terminates application protocols, it has comprehensive understanding of the user-to-application interaction and its context. As a result, proxy appliances provide IT with the power to define, enforce and audit intelligent policy controls over user/application interactions. By distributing proxy appliances at key points in an enterprise infrastructure -- the data center, the gateway and regional/branch offices -- organizations can create robust system architecture to protect, control and accelerate Web communications.

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 for all users and applications Blue Coat has installed more than 25,000 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.

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.

NOTE: All trademarks, trade names or service marks used or mentioned herein belong to their respective owners.

Source: Blue Coat Systems

CONTACT: media, Steve Schick of Blue Coat Systems, +1-408-220-2076, or
steve.schick@bluecoat.com; or Kevin Kosh of CHEN PR, +1-781-672-3111, or
kkosh@chenpr.com, for Blue Coat Systems; or investors, Carla Chun of Blue Coat
Systems, +1-408-220-2318, or Carla.chun@bluecoat.com

Web site: http://www.bluecoat.com/

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