Blue Coat Completes Packeteer Acquisition

By Richard Martin

Following through on its effort to compete with security giants like McAfee (MFE) and Symantec (SYMC), Blue Coat Systems says it has completed its acquisition of Packeteer, Inc.

After starting life as an “Internet accelerator”, speeding up delivery of content over balky networks, and then moving into URL filtering, Blue Coat has broadened its business to include tools to protect corporate networks from malware and data leaks. Blue Coat’s ProxySG appliances allow operators like BT and Sprint to monitor Web surfing activity and issue alerts or block content based on pre-defined company policies as well as monitoring for viruses and other malicious code.

With the $268 million purchase, Blue Coat has added the PacketShaper applicance, for monitoring and controlling traffic on corporate networks, with its home-grown ProxySG appliances, which scan traffic for inappropriate content or threatening code and optimize it for delivery.

“PacketShaper appliances,” says Network World, “can differentiate internal applications from Internet traffic, or differentiate between back-up and real-time traffic, and give priority to applications such as voice.”