Blue Coat Systems and Alcatel-Lucent have signed a multi-year, global reseller agreement to bring industry-leading web caching and content delivery solutions to service providers worldwide.

Under the agreement, Alcatel-Lucent will sell Blue Coat products, including Blue Coat ProxySG and CacheFlow appliances, to Alcatel-Lucent customers worldwide – including tier-one telcos, managed service providers, regional ISPs and mobile operators. The products are available immediately.

Alcatel-Lucent will specifically leverage the CacheFlow appliance as a complement to Alcatel-Lucent’s Velocix Content Delivery Network solution. The Velocix Digital Media Delivery Platform manages the distribution of digital content and is based on open Internet based video standards.

The CacheFlow appliance reduces the strain of bandwidth-consuming dynamic Web 2.0 and video content by transparently caching such “over-the-top” content, providing bandwidth savings for carriers and a better experience for users. The CacheFlow appliance also helps service providers manage traffic “spikes” due to unusually high demand for content on breaking news or special events.

Working together, Alcatel-Lucent and Blue Coat will exploit innovative content delivery technologies, including a new generation of Web and video caching, to enable service providers to enhance their customers’ video and web experience while offering reduced overall costs associated with bandwidth delivery and backhaul.

Multimedia caching technology allows operators to store some content locally closer to the user to improve delivery performance across the network and user experience.

In addition, Blue Coat ProxySG and PacketShaper appliances can provide service providers with a range of security, application acceleration and visibility capabilities to further improve the user experience, add value in content and application delivery and provide protection from malicious threats and phishing.

“The Blue Coat platform is proven in some of the largest service provider and enterprise environments in the world, and it complements our existing products and services, giving service providers another tool to improve and simplify video delivery,” said Paul Larbey, vice president of Alcatel-Lucent’s Velocix Content Delivery Network solutions.

“With Alcatel-Lucent’s market-leading position in networking infrastructure solutions and its well-earned reputation among service providers, Blue Coat sees tremendous opportunity with this strategic relationship to expand its already established global footprint with service providers,” said Mike Borman, president and chief executive officer, Blue Coat Systems.-TradeArabia News Service