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Blue Coat Updates PacketShaper Appliances

Blue Coat Systems introduced new updates for Blue Coat PacketShaper appliances that enable businesses to fully embrace Web, cloud and mixed-use recreational applications on the corporate network while providing a high quality user experience for maximum employee productivity.

The newest advances for PacketShaper appliances provide visibility into Web applications and operations as well as the group and user-level policies that allow businesses to gain control over the shadow IT infrastructures that arise from the introduction of applications onto the corporate network without IT’s knowledge.

The new PacketShaper enhancements include:

- Granular application and operation visibility: PacketShaper appliances now classify Web, native mobile and mobile browser applications and their operations, providing businesses with a comprehensive, detailed view of traffic on the corporate network.

- Group and user-level control: PacketShaper appliances now provide businesses with the ability to set granular group or user-level policies that assure a high quality experience for users that rely on Web and cloud-based applications to do their jobs.

- Aggregate view of user-level activity: The new enhancements also provide an aggregate view of a user’s activity across all the devices they are using on the network, giving businesses the comprehensive information they require to set appropriate quality of service policies.

With the new PacketShaper enhancements, businesses can embrace new Web and cloud applications that their employees require to be efficient in their jobs without ceding control of the network.

To do this, the PacketShaper appliances allow businesses to do the following:

- Better understand how users, applications and operations are consuming bandwidth

- Prioritize and guarantee bandwidth for critical application operations on a targeted group and user basis, enabling a better user experience for employees

- Identify and contain unsanctioned application use cases

The granular application and operation controls combined with the ability to set quality of service policies at the user level allow enterprises to guarantee bandwidth for IT mandated Web and cloud-based applications and operations, resulting in a better user experience that will encourage adoption of preferred applications.

These new advances also provide businesses with a powerful tool for managing complex, mixed-use Web applications such as Facebook or YouTube. With user-level policies, businesses can provide employees in the marketing group with guaranteed bandwidth to upload videos. This granular control allows businesses to open their networks to mixed-use applications without compromising the performance of other mission-critical business applications.

“BYOD, social networking and complex Web applications with business and non-business uses have a major impact on bandwidth budgets and application performance, yet businesses typically lack visibility into and control over the shadow IT infrastructures that they introduce to the corporate network,” said Mark Urban, senior director of product marketing, Blue Coat Systems. “PacketShaper is changing that dynamic by shedding light on these shadow infrastructures and giving businesses the ability to embrace these technologies and empower their employees.”

PacketShaper appliances classify all applications on the network and are integrated into the Blue Coat WebPulse service to provide real-time categorization of tens of millions of Web sites and applications. New Web, native mobile and mobile browser applications and operations that are classified in WebPulse will be available to all PacketShaper appliances without requiring software updates or plug-ins. For businesses, this up-to-the-minute intelligence about Web content and applications on the corporate network will allow them to embrace new applications without sacrificing control or the performance of other mission-critical business applications.

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Blue Coat Updates PacketShaper Appliances

Blue Coat Systems introduced new updates for Blue Coat PacketShaper appliances that enable businesses to fully embrace Web, cloud and mixed-use recreational applications on the corporate network while providing a high quality user experience for maximum employee productivity.

The newest advances for PacketShaper appliances provide visibility into Web applications and operations as well as the group and user-level policies that allow businesses to gain control over the shadow IT infrastructures that arise from the introduction of applications onto the corporate network without IT’s knowledge.

The new PacketShaper enhancements include:

- Granular application and operation visibility: PacketShaper appliances now classify Web, native mobile and mobile browser applications and their operations, providing businesses with a comprehensive, detailed view of traffic on the corporate network.

- Group and user-level control: PacketShaper appliances now provide businesses with the ability to set granular group or user-level policies that assure a high quality experience for users that rely on Web and cloud-based applications to do their jobs.

- Aggregate view of user-level activity: The new enhancements also provide an aggregate view of a user’s activity across all the devices they are using on the network, giving businesses the comprehensive information they require to set appropriate quality of service policies.

With the new PacketShaper enhancements, businesses can embrace new Web and cloud applications that their employees require to be efficient in their jobs without ceding control of the network.

To do this, the PacketShaper appliances allow businesses to do the following:

- Better understand how users, applications and operations are consuming bandwidth

- Prioritize and guarantee bandwidth for critical application operations on a targeted group and user basis, enabling a better user experience for employees

- Identify and contain unsanctioned application use cases

The granular application and operation controls combined with the ability to set quality of service policies at the user level allow enterprises to guarantee bandwidth for IT mandated Web and cloud-based applications and operations, resulting in a better user experience that will encourage adoption of preferred applications.

These new advances also provide businesses with a powerful tool for managing complex, mixed-use Web applications such as Facebook or YouTube. With user-level policies, businesses can provide employees in the marketing group with guaranteed bandwidth to upload videos. This granular control allows businesses to open their networks to mixed-use applications without compromising the performance of other mission-critical business applications.

“BYOD, social networking and complex Web applications with business and non-business uses have a major impact on bandwidth budgets and application performance, yet businesses typically lack visibility into and control over the shadow IT infrastructures that they introduce to the corporate network,” said Mark Urban, senior director of product marketing, Blue Coat Systems. “PacketShaper is changing that dynamic by shedding light on these shadow infrastructures and giving businesses the ability to embrace these technologies and empower their employees.”

PacketShaper appliances classify all applications on the network and are integrated into the Blue Coat WebPulse service to provide real-time categorization of tens of millions of Web sites and applications. New Web, native mobile and mobile browser applications and operations that are classified in WebPulse will be available to all PacketShaper appliances without requiring software updates or plug-ins. For businesses, this up-to-the-minute intelligence about Web content and applications on the corporate network will allow them to embrace new applications without sacrificing control or the performance of other mission-critical business applications.

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From growing reliance on FinOps teams to the increasing attention on artificial intelligence (AI), and software licensing, the Flexera 2025 State of the Cloud Report digs into how organizations are improving cloud spend efficiency, while tackling the complexities of emerging technologies ...

Today, organizations are generating and processing more data than ever before. From training AI models to running complex analytics, massive datasets have become the backbone of innovation. However, as businesses embrace the cloud for its scalability and flexibility, a new challenge arises: managing the soaring costs of storing and processing this data ...

Despite the frustrations, every engineer we spoke with ultimately affirmed the value and power of OpenTelemetry. The "sucks" moments are often the flip side of its greatest strengths ... Part 2 of this blog covers the powerful advantages and breakthroughs — the "OTel Rocks" moments ...

OpenTelemetry (OTel) arrived with a grand promise: a unified, vendor-neutral standard for observability data (traces, metrics, logs) that would free engineers from vendor lock-in and provide deeper insights into complex systems ... No powerful technology comes without its challenges, and OpenTelemetry is no exception. The engineers we spoke with were frank about the friction points they've encountered ...

Enterprises are turning to AI-powered software platforms to make IT management more intelligent and ensure their systems and technology meet business needs for efficiency, lowers costs and innovation, according to new research from Information Services Group ...

The power of Kubernetes lies in its ability to orchestrate containerized applications with unparalleled efficiency. Yet, this power comes at a cost: the dynamic, distributed, and ephemeral nature of its architecture creates a monitoring challenge akin to tracking a constantly shifting, interconnected network of fleeting entities ... Due to the dynamic and complex nature of Kubernetes, monitoring poses a substantial challenge for DevOps and platform engineers. Here are the primary obstacles ...

The perception of IT has undergone a remarkable transformation in recent years. What was once viewed primarily as a cost center has transformed into a pivotal force driving business innovation and market leadership ... As someone who has witnessed and helped drive this evolution, it's become clear to me that the most successful organizations share a common thread: they've mastered the art of leveraging IT advancements to achieve measurable business outcomes ...

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Real privacy protection thanks to technology and processes is often portrayed as too hard and too costly to implement. So the most common strategy is to do as little as possible just to conform to formal requirements of current and incoming regulations. This is a missed opportunity ...

The expanding use of AI is driving enterprise interest in data operations (DataOps) to orchestrate data integration and processing and improve data quality and validity, according to a new report from Information Services Group (ISG) ...