New PacketShaper release provides application accountability for regaining network control and enabling quality

PacketShaper 8.5 appliances provide a new level of tightly integrated application visibility, enhanced application intelligence and policy-based control that together bring application accountability to the enterprise network. Application accountability enables businesses to better assure the quality of bandwidth-hungry business-critical applications and communication, including telephony and video conferencing, while controlling usage of progressively more taxing recreational applications.

The new PacketShaper 8.5 release uses integrated workflows to enable more detailed application understanding with real-time monitoring, historical reporting and policy-based QoS controls. It provides an intuitive, fully integrated workspace that visually shows critical application behavior and displays the immediate effect of applied QoS through an intuitive user interface. Similar applications can be automatically grouped together in class of service categories, such as peer-to-peer (P2P), games or instant messaging, for ease of management. In addition, PacketShaper appliances now provide more granular visibility and control over voice, video and virtualized applications.

"Despite the many types of security appliances and packet filters on the market, application identification and control continue to be an Achilles heel for large organizations. Blue Coat's new release of PacketShaper addresses this issue by providing concise analysis of the actual application traffic traversing the network and offering management tools for application control. Armed with these capabilities, IT and security professionals can make intelligent decisions about controlling applications."

said Nidal Taha, Regional Director for ME and Turkey, Blue Coat Systems.

Application Accountability

Application accountability is now possible due to the combination of existing PacketShaper technology with the addition of integrated workflows. The result is application visibility based on greater application intelligence, including understanding application behavior over a period of time and across a flow of packets rather than basing an assessment on a single packet at a single instance of time. It also takes into consideration peaks or surges in bandwidth demands as well as the sustained or average consumption and behavior and overcomes the limitations of conventional deep packet inspection.

Based on more detailed application visibility, application accountability provides enhanced quality for important applications, including voice, video and real-time sessions. It also manages applications to allotted bandwidth consumption and prevents them from impinging on the performance of other applications due to unexpected surges or changes in behavior. The PacketShaper administrator workspace uses integrated workflows to display real-time graphing of applications running across the network, including peak bandwidth demands. The graphs also show the immediate effect of bandwidth management when it is applied.

"Businesses need to understand what applications are consuming network capacity so that they can align network resources with business priorities," said Mr. Taha. "PacketShaper appliances now provide Application accountability to enhance the quality of business-critical applications and communication while providing the means for companies to regain network control."

Precision in Managing Virtualized Desktops

PacketShaper 8.5 adds the capability to specifically identify and manage network traffic from VMware View Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) applications on a granular basis. PacketShaper appliances, with this new software release, can prevent VDI set-up and downloads from temporarily dominating WAN capacity. At the same time, used in conjunction with Blue Coat® ProxySG® appliances, they can dramatically reduce the amount of time to load a virtualized desktop onto a remote computer in a branch office.

With the new release, PacketShaper appliances can now distinguish between the various VMware operations, including, configuration and login, offline desktop downloads and synchronization and VDI Remote desktop streaming. Through more granular visibility and control, PacketShaper appliances help latency-sensitive interactive streaming sessions work as intended, while set-up and large downloads do not monopolize the Wide Area Network (WAN) and prevent other traffic from flowing as expected.

Blue Coat recently joined the VMware Technology Alliance Partner Program and will be demonstrating its solution for VMware View ADI applications at VMworld 2009 in San Francisco, Calif. from August 31 to September 3.

Enhanced Intelligence: Auto-Discovery of VoIP Handsets and Soft Phones

PacketShaper 8.5 can automatically identify voice traffic and distinguish between different devices or applications using voice, even if the same protocols and codec are used for both. For instance, PacketShaper can distinguish between a call using a specific make or model of an enterprise VoIP phone system and a consumer voice application, such as email or instant messaging with voice support. Policies to support quality of voice calls can now be applied to the enterprise phone system rather than to individual software applications used by employees. In addition, the new PacketShaper release offers the ability to specifically identify and manage voice and video within Microsoft Live Meeting or Office Communications Server (OCS).

Application Accountability Advances Application Delivery Networks

Blue Coat PacketShaper appliances, combined with ProxySG appliances, are the foundation of an Application Delivery Network for optimizing and securing the flow of information to any user on any network, anywhere. Application Delivery Networks start with application visibility to determine exactly what is running over the WAN or Internet gateway and treat it according to policy. The ability to determine the exact application and whether it is business-critical, recreational or malicious is essential to maintaining the quality of important applications while managing or curtailing recreational or malicious ones. The new ability for PacketShaper to provide application accountability advances application visibility and control to more fully deliver the value of an Application Delivery Network.

Availability

PacketShaper 8.5 will be available in September 2009 as a free software upgrade to existing PacketShaper customers with current support contracts.