Blue Coat Systems has announced a new software release designed for its Blue Coat (News - Alert) CacheFlow appliances. With this update, CacheFlow appliances will be able to provide 50 percent bandwidth savings for general Web traffic, as well as greater bandwidth savings for dedicated large file and video caching.
This release is expected to deliver benefits for network monitoring as it provides greater manageability, resiliency and scalability to support rapidly growing demand for new, rich media Web content for mission-critical service provider deployments.
CacheFlow appliances designed to deliver network monitoring capabilities have already been deployed throughout the world since their 2010 introduction. Customers include such companies as FASTtelco in Kuwait, Afribone in West Africa, True Internet in Thailand, REDtone (News - Alert) in Malaysia, Telecom New Zealand, and North-Eastern Pennsylvania Telephone Company in North America.
"CacheFlow appliances have proven their value in delivering high-quality, rich Web 2.0 content, including video, at substantially lower operational costs for the service provider," said Nidal Taha, managing director EMEA of the Carrier Division at Blue Coat Systems, in a statement. "They have become a valuable tool for service providers that are struggling to reduce bandwidth consumption while improving the Web experience."
CacheFlow appliances from Blue Coat utilize next-generation caching technology and will scale content delivery to meet burgeoning subscriber demands. These appliances will also provide a shock absorber to address traffic spikes that result from the rapid popularity of websites and content in a short amount of time.
Service providers struggling to deliver rich, dynamic Web content to their users can benefit from specific enhancements in this latest network monitoring release. These benefits include enhanced feedback loop, enhanced diagnostics and infrastructure monitoring, simplified management for multiple appliances, greater system resiliency, and flexible power support.
The enhanced feedback loop provides specialized caching rules in a dynamic, automated fashion as Web content changes. The latest release delivers tighter integration between CacheFlow appliances and Blue Boat CachePulse service, the cloud-based service designed to optimize caching rules and instructions to the appliances.
Improved diagnostic capabilities ensure administrators know how to understand the complex interactions of the CacheFlow devices with other critical network elements. The Blue Coat CacheGroup tool enables administrators to set a master configuration for a single CacheFlow appliance and propagate the configuration of other appliances. This tool also allows a secondary CacheFlow appliance in a cache farm to take over in the event of a failure in the master appliance.
These enhancements in this network monitoring tool are immediately available for download by customers currently supported in an existing contract, or can be purchased separately.
Tracey Schelmetic is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of Tracey's articles, please visit her columnist page.Edited by Tammy Wolf