Blue Coat SG Client

Blue Coat SG Client Overview:

Blue Coat SG Client extends application delivery to mobile users and small branch offices, enabling application acceleration to the desktop. SG Client offers several acceleration and optimization techniques to provide a LAN-like end-user experience for telecommuters, mobile employees, remote third party contractors and others who need access to internal or hosted resources but are potentially thousands of miles away. Whether used to complement a branch office solution or simply to improve the application and file services performance for remote users connecting over VPNs, SG Client minimizes lost productivity and end-user frustration from sluggish applications and slow network performance.

• LAN-like end-user experience – minimize end-user productivity loss from slow file access by accelerating file operations (opening, copying, saving and closing of Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, Adobe Acrobat files and other files located on remote file shares) up to 25 times
   
• Accelerated Web applications – speed up heavyweight Web applications so they are finally usable again by remote employees and partners
   
• Granular Control by Application – define which applications are accelerated and which are not to prevent accelerating non-critical business applications, such as personal Web browsing

As an integrated part of the Blue Coat solution for WAN optimization, SG Client is administered with the SG management console for easy provisioning, configuration and ongoing maintenance. It can also be distributed to end-user machines using standard software provisioning services and is automatically and transparently updated to minimize ongoing administrative time and resources. SG Client also delivers business-critical features for load balancing and failover. On the desktop, SG Client starts automatically on system boot and includes a real-time statistics display to monitor application performance.

SG Client complements Blue Coat SG appliances by establishing distributed points of control to accelerate business applications for remote workers. Deployed for mobile employees, workers in small branch offices or both, SG Client delivers the application acceleration and WAN optimization features necessary to maximize remote worker productivity through accelerated access to corporate resources and applications.

SG Client extends acceleration features to remote desktops to improve the performance of business applications and file services for small branch office workers and mobile employees.

Features:

Acceleration:

• Object Caching - Store files (Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, etc.) locally to provide LAN-like performance for remote workers without overhead of traditional wide area file services
• Protocol Optimization - Improve performance of CIFS protocol over wide area networks and the Internet
• Compression - Reduce predictable patterns within TCP applications to improve utilization of network bandwidth by TCP applications

Manageability & Reliability:

• Centralized Management - Configure, deploy and maintain SG Clients centrally through Client Manager of SG management interface
• Policy-based Acceleration - Define which applications are accelerated and which are not to prevent accelerating non-critical business applications, such as personal Web browsing
• Automatic Load Balancing and Failover - Detect and failover to alternative SG concentrators when primary is unavailable
• IPSec VPN Transparency - Deploy SG client to IPSec VPN users without any changes to IPSec VPN configuration

Visibility:

• Client-side Logging and Trace Files - Trouble shoot end-user problems quickly and easily through comprehensive logs and trace files
• Real-time Client Statistics - Monitor performance statistics in real-time through graphical client-side displays

Technical Specifications:

Documentation:

Download the Blue Coat SG Client Datasheet (PDF).