News

posted on 09 May 2008 09:01

Blue Coat systems will deveop acquired Packeteer's PacketShaper product to make more application-aware.

Packeteer is a wide area network (WAN) data acceleration supplier that is being acquired by Blue Coat after failing to keep up with market development. The main supplier of such services is RiverBed with its Steelhead appliance, which has awareness of specific applications needs so that it can more effectively accelerate the transmission of their files across a WAN.

Blue Coat will invest significantly in PacketShaper to enhance and expand its current application identification and classification capabilities, and maintain it as a standalone product.

Blue Coat also plans to explore extending the interoperability between PacketShaper and its own ProxySG family of appliances, based upon a closer analysis and feedback from customers. It will also investigate using PacketShaper technologies in future products.

Brian NeSmith, Blue Coat' president and CEO, said: “The Packeteer PacketShaper appliance is a great product with a strong and well-deserved reputation. We plan to rejuvenate the product to extend its life long into the future as a standalone product and build upon the capabilities of the PacketShaper and ProxySG appliances to solve the challenges of WAN Application Delivery.”

Blue Coat has to extend and develop PacketShaper's technology; there is little point in buying Packeteer otherwise. It has Steelhead as the technology to pursue, match and beat and has a long haul ahead.

^{[Chris Mellor, editor.]}