Blue Coat Eyes Small Biz

The 50-user, 100-user and 250-user packages combine Internet filtering technology with Blue Coat's new low-end SG400 appliance, which features a smaller form factor than its other appliances.

The bundled solutions, which come with support from Blue Coat, are easy for solution providers to sell, said Bob Pratt, director of product marketing at Blue Coat, based here. He also said the appliance packages are easier to deploy and provide better margins for VARs compared with deploying the filtering software on a Windows-based server.

"It's a fantastic idea," said Alan Dumas, president of Accunet Solutions, a Boston-based solution provider. "A lot of customers are looking at content filtering, but they don't want to spend money to buy another server to put it on."

Shyam Manwani, principal at S&L International, a systems integrator based in Pasadena, Calif., said the bundled solution streamlines deployment of Web filtering, which typically requires several components and confuses customers. "By the time they're done looking at the laundry list, their heads are spinning," he said. "Here you have one SKU. It's like one silver bullet."

Manwani said the Blue Coat appliance provides a highly secure platform from which to run services such as filtering, and that the new bundles will drive deployment of both Blue Coat and Websense in the small and midsize markets.

List pricing for the bundles start at $5,700 for the 50-user package with San Jose, Calif.-based Secure Computing's SmartFilter and tops at $10,500 for the 250-user Websense version.