CyberGuard buttons up contract with Blue Coat

Two security vendors have claimed the integration is already proving popular with customers

CyberGuard has partnered with fellow security vendor Blue Coat Systems to bundle its Webwasher URL Filter on Blue Coat’s ProxySG appliances.

The network security vendor, which acquired Webwasher last year (CRN, 10 May), claimed the partnership with Blue Coat will help both sets of channel partners win more deals in the enterprise space.

According to the two firms, the combined product will enable the target enterprise market to reduce non-business related web surfing, curb the cost of downloading bandwidth-intensive files and filter out inappropriate web sites.

Andrew Clarke, EMEAmanaging director at CyberGuard, claimed the combination was already popular.

“There has been extensive demand from customers who have already selected Blue Coat's appliances but want to use CyberGuard’s Webwasher URL filtering as well,” he said.

“We are seeing the fruits of the integration already. Large enterprise customers are looking for performance and this product bundle enables our resellers to be very competitive in the high-end enterprise space when they are up against other similar offerings.”

Steve Mullaney, vice-president of marketing at Blue Coat, added: “Partnering with Webwasher enables us to offer end-users an additional choice for on-proxy URL filtering. While the ProxySG appliances with Webwasher URL filtering give customers comprehensive security and control, Blue Coat also provides them with a ten-fold performance increase for web traffic on the network.”

Marc Chambault, director of vendor partnerships at reseller Integralis Group, said: “We work with Blue Coat across Europe and we have had success with Webwasher, particularly in Germany. We are very happy with the partnership announcement. We feel it is a solution that will be quite attractive for customers who have already invested in one vendor and can now add the functionality of the other.”

Chambault said Blue Coat is looking to gain market share and partnering with vendors such as CyberGuard allows it to “get closer to customer segments where it has previously been excluded”.