Blue Coat Makes WAN Optimization Virtual

Blue Coat Systems today is announcing ProxySG virtual appliances, which is a software-only implementation of the company’s wide area network (WAN) optimization software that runs on top of vSphere virtual machine software from VMware.

With the advent of virtual machines, network bandwidth is at a premium because more virtual machines are contending for the same amount of bandwidth. In addition, multiple virtual machines are sharing the same physical server.

While the ProxySG virtual appliance sits on top of VMware software, ProxySG can also manage bandwidth access for any guest operating system sitting on top of the virtual machine.

Chris Webber, product marketing manager for Blue Coat Systems, said the ProxySG is primarily aimed at optimizing the WAN performance of branch officer servers running virtualization software.

Pricing for the ProxySG appliance starts at $1,110 a year for a version that can support 10 simultaneous users.