Websense-Blue Coat Skirmish Plays Out In Channel

Strategic partners Websense and Blue Coat have been slinging mud at each other over the past few months, with each company sending detailed correspondence to channel partners describing the technological shortcomings of the other.

Websense fired the first shot back in February when it sent partners a document entitled, "Blue Coat - You Get What You Pay For!" which questioned Blue Coat's security in a bullet list of points. The document -- viewed recently by CRN -- alleged that Blue Coat's WebFilter product has technological flaws, including over-blocking of URLs, weak protection against spyware, and lack of real time updates. The document also pointed to Blue Coat's battered stock price as a reason that partners should steer clear of the vendor.

"It is not possible that a seven person organization with half the database size...could outperform a company like Websense with over 10 years of expertise and an award winning product as truly independent tests have shown," Websense said.

Soon after, Blue Coat executives fired back with a document of their own that rebutted each of Websense's claims and fired a few shots back. "Websense inflates the price of its solution by charging a premium for the Web filtering categories most needed by its customers -- including security, productivity, and bandwidth-intensive sites," read the document viewed by CRN.

VARs said the battle is a sign of the intense and growing competition in the content security space that's being fueled by consolidation of technologies and vendors' expanding product lines. Adding intrigue to the battle is the fact that many solution providers in the content security space have relationships with both vendors.

"If you're a partner of both companies in this battle, you're starting to see your vendor loyalties become foggy," said a solution provider who didn't want to be named.

Websense and Blue Coat have a partnership in which Blue Coat uses Websense's URL filtering platform in its SG line of security appliances, said to Steve Mullaney, vice president of marketing at Blue Coat, Sunnyvale, Calif. He doesn't expect the partnership to be affected by the recent friction between the two vendors.

In the first quarter, Websense stopped selling its technology directly through BlueCoat, but it can still be purchased through any of the two vendors' joint resellers as an on- or off-box integration, according to a Websense spokesperson.

Although vendor relationships remain important, the threat to VARs in the security space is coming from increasing consolidation of security technology and growing competition in a market where everyone was already fighting for every dollar, said another solution provider executive who asked not to be named.

"VARs must focus on becoming subject matter experts and build themselves into trusted advisers, and they're really going to have to step it up on the value side," he said.

Websense has done a good job in becoming an industry standard, but Blue Coat has done a far superior job at being more channel friendly and has continued to scale and grow their product line to offer clients the best value, the executive added.

"Websense is a great product, but to attack Blue Coat for advancing their platform for the better of the client is a waste of time," said the executive.