Blue Coat

Blue Coat® helps organisations make the Web safe and productive for business. Blue Coat proxy appliances provide visibility and control of Web communications to protect against risks from spyware, Web viruses, inappropriate Web surfing, instant messaging (IM), video streaming and peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing - while actually improving Web performance. Trusted by many of the world's largest organisations, Blue Coat has shipped more than 20,000 proxy appliances.

Blue Coat has a tremendous opportunity for growth as organisations become increasingly dependent on the Internet to communicate with customers, partners and employees. The Web browser has become the universal client for mission-critical communications and information, but it can also lead to increased risks for the enterprise, such as:

• Increased help desk calls due to spyware infected PCs

• Legal liabilities associated with inappropriate Web surfing and content

• Opening backdoors for viruses with instant messaging (IM) and personal Web-based email

• Network bandwidth and storage abuse due to peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing and video streaming

• Productivity losses from non-business related Web surfing and personal IM chatting

• When every user on the network has Internet access, every user also has the means to negatively affect the business, intentionally or not.

While security devices such as firewalls block internal networks from external access, it's proxy appliances that provide visibility and control of all user-initiated Web communications. As a result, more and more organisations, including 70% of the Dow Jones Industrial companies, are relying on Blue Coat high performance proxy appliances to control how their employees use the Internet. Highlighting the growing customer demand for Blue Coat proxy appliances, leading market research firm IDC recently recognised Blue Coat as the overall appliance leader in the secure content management market with 33 percent market share, more than triple that of its nearest competitor. IDC estimates that this market will grow to more than $1.6 billion in 2007, and Blue Coat is well positioned to capitalise on this tremendous market opportunity.