Blue Coat Systems

2016: Symantec buys Blue Coat for $4.65 billion

On June 13, 2016 the American producer of the antivirus software Symantec announced acquisition of Blue Coat for $4.65 billion. Due to this absorption the buyer expects to strengthen the corporate business.

Symantec buys Blue Coat from private investment fund Bain Capital. Purchase will be paid with borrowed and own funds of Symantec. At the beginning of 2016 Symantec sold business on release of software for Veritas data management for $7.4 billion, having received a necessary stock of cash for purchase of other companies.

Symantec buys Blue Coat for gain of corporate business

The CEO of Blue Coat Greg Clark will head Symantec, having replaced Michael Brown who left posts of the CEO and president of the company at the end of April, 2016.

It is going execute all formalities concerning sale of Blue Coat of Symantec company by October, 2016. The united company will have annual revenues of about $4.4 billion most of which part (62%) is necessary on solutions for business users

Symantec says that purchase of Blue Coat should strengthen positions of the company in the market of technologies of ensuring corporate information security in fight against such vendors as Palo Alto Networks, FireEye and Check Point Software Technologies.

At the same time the chief financial officer of Symantec Thomas Seifert explains that the company is not going to sell consumer business as it is still a big source of profit.

According to Seifert, Symantec began to study a possibility of purchase of Blue Coat long ago, but did not hurry with the conclusion of the transaction, waiting for official sale of business of Veritas.

It will be very perspective merge — the chairman of the board of directors of Symantec Daniel Schulman comments on the transaction. — We receive big business, a rich product portfolio and services and also the resources necessary for protection of clients against constantly modified threats.

According to Clark, product lines of Symantec and Blue Coat practically do not duplicate each other anywhere.

2015: Thoma Bravo sells Blue Coat to Bain Capital fund for $2.4 billion

On March 10, 2015 the funds which are under control of^[1] knew of the transaction of purchase and sale of Blue Coat Systems company^[1].

The size of the transaction is estimated at $2.4 billion.

The Thoma Bravo investment company, the former owner, purchased Blue Coat in 2011 for $1.3 billion. In the stated plans of Bain Capital further expansion of the range of services and goods of the company with the subsequent output of its actions to the stock market.

2014: Kaspersky Lab - one of key partners

In June, 2014 the Gartner agency called Blue Coat the leader of "a magic quadrant" in a segment of the protected web gateways, having located the company above Cisco.

Analysts of Gartner noted: "ProxySG is the most powerful proxy server from existing in the market, thanks to a set of the supported protocols and also numerous "advanced" options. Along with a big set of the supported protocols effective remedies of authentication and integration of directories are implemented".

Corporate facts:

• one of the most important technology partners of Blue Coat - Kaspersky Lab. Solutions of Kaspersky Lab in many respects provide the unsurpassed level of virus detection and malware with the products Blue Coat,
• clients of Blue Coat - more than 15 thousand companies and the organizations in the world, including 86% of the companies from the Fortune Global 500 list;
• the products Blue Coat protect about 75 million users;
• in the company more than 1300 employees work;
• daily the solutions Blue Coat block more than 3 million threats, more than 1 billion web requests perform a categorization;
• the company owns 185 patents (registered and which are under consideration).

The solutions Blue Coat for ensuring network security are constructed around a core — the protected gateway and a hardware proxy of ProxySG. This device - a link between the World Wide Web and corporate network, performs various functions of protection and network traffic control, including authentication of users, web filtering, data loss prevention, inspection of the ciphered SSL traffic, caching of content, capacity control, etc.

Distinctive feature of the solutions Blue Coat — creation of a security system on a modular basis. In other words, the central node of a system — ProxySG — can be complemented with the different devices allowing to implement expanded options of protection.

2013

Products of a class of the protected web gateway form a basis of the Center of Blue Coat for security and establishment network the politician (Security and Policy Enforcement Center). This Center which is one of five components of Business Assurance Technology provides business continuity of business due to protection against network threats and loss of information. Using products and services of the Blue Coat Center for security and establishment network the politician, the enterprises can ensure to the users the protected and productive net surfing and the Internet.

The Blue Coat center for security and establishment network the politician works together with the Center of expansion of mobile opportunities (Mobility Empowerment Center), the Center of the entrusted applications (Trusted Application Center) and the Center of ensuring performance (Performance Center). The fifth center – Resolution center (Resolution Center) – allows to increase controllability of the enterprises.

2011

Thoma Bravo purchases Blue Coat

Within 18 years the Blue Coat company replaced a name, underwent the IPO, moved to Silicon Valley in California (USA), absorbed about ten small firms and in 2011 it was purchased by Thoma Bravo investment fund.

The leader in the market of the gateways Web security from shares of 17%

According to the report of a research of the market of gateways of web security Gartner Secure Web Gateway market in 2011, Blue Coat is in the lead from shares of 17% that corresponds to volume in $1.95 billion and includes program and hardware-software gateways of Web security. In a segment of hardware solutions the share of the products Blue Coat makes 44%, and advantage in comparison with the closest competitor reaches 30%.

2009: One of leaders in development of solutions on acceleration of operation of applications on the global area networks

By 2009 the Blue Coat company became one of the largest players in the field of production of solutions on acceleration of operation of applications on the global area networks (WAN) and safety.

The equipment Blue Coat provides transparency and control of WEB of communications online. They are integrated with different authentication systems that gives flexibility of application the politician up to the individual user. They turn on content filtering, control of instant messaging services and peer-to-peer of networks and provide anti-virus scanning. Blue Coat product line also includes powerful tools of the reporting and centralized operation necessary for implementation of scalable proxies of solutions both in centralized, and in the distributed companies.

In projects of creation of the network solutions Blue Coat use as means which accelerates delivery of internal and external critical business applications, prioritizes applications, reduces traffic volume. By average estimates, after implementing solution response time of web applications decreases two-is triple, reduction of volume of the transferred traffic can reach 97%.

The fact that the functionality in the field of optimization and security is combined in one device selects Blue Coat from a number of solutions of this class along with the high performance and support of a full range of protocols.

1996: Foundation of the company

The Blue Coat Systems company (the former name CacheFlow) is founded in the State of Washington, in 1996, with the main office to Sunnyvale, California.

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