Blue Coat CacheFlow helps Prince Mohammad Bin Fahd University deliver rich media learning content to students

Through the advanced caching technology of the Blue Coat appliances, the University has reduced Internet traffic to multimedia sites by 40 percent, freeing up bandwidth for critical applications and greatly enhancing the user experience for all students.

Prince Mohammad Bin Fahd University (PMU) is a new private university located in the Al-Khobar area of the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia. PMU is designed to reflect the vision of its Founder, HRH Prince Mohammad Bin Fahd Bin Abdulaziz, which is to establish a modern IT based university embracing a student - centered learning environment and conducts all its operations in compliance with international standards. During peak days, the average utilization of PMU's Internet link ranged between 170MB to 190MB.

"The modern day student is highly accustomed to an online lifestyle, and it is only logical that this extends to the manner in which they learn as well. At PMU, we are deeply committed to providing our students and faculty with the best learning facilities and rich media content is a big part of this. Such content, however, is extremely bandwidth-intensive and delivering it without purchasing additional capacity was a challenge," said HRH Prince Turki BIN Mohammad BIN Fahd, Deputy Chairman of the Board of Trustees of PMU.

Blue Coat CacheFlow appliances deliver scalable caching by serving a large number of requests locally, providing a significant reduction in Internet traffic on the network. The solution also adapts to enhance the effectiveness of Web caching as the Internet changes, including how popular multimedia websites deliver video, offering organizations investment protection.

The decision to deploy the Blue Coat solution was made primarily on the basis of the vendor's strong reputation in the market as well as the implementation and upgrade roadmap presented by Beta Information Technology, Blue Coat's partner in Saudi Arabia.

PMU Management commented that due to the adoption of best practice project management methodologies, they experienced a smooth implementation of a solution that has exceeded their requirements. The feedback they have received has been overwhelmingly positive as students and faculty are now able to access the Internet at LAN speeds. They can now even run business-critical applications during peak utilization windows without impacting performance.

HussamAbusamra, regional director, Middle East & Turkey at Blue Coat Systems said, "The ever-increasing demand for rich media Web content means the modern educational institution will always need more bandwidth. Of course budgets dictate that only so much can be purchased, which is where Blue Coat steps in to bridge the gap. Our innovative scalable solutions have been designed to help organizations save on bandwidth without compromising user experience."