Blue Coat and AirWatch Empower Adoption of Secure Mobile Initiatives

SOURCE: AirWatch

SUNNYVALE, Calif., July 22, 2013 – Blue Coat Systems, Inc., the market leader in business assurance technology, and AirWatch, the largest Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) provider, today announced they have partnered to deliver an interoperable solution that empowers companies to securely embrace and deliver enterprise-wide mobile initiatives.

The Blue Coat partnership with AirWatch addresses a critical problem in deploying mobile devices across the enterprise. Prior to the partnership, companies were forced to make tradeoffs between mobile device management capabilities, such as application whitelisting and blacklisting and remote lock and wipe, and protection against Web-based threats. By integrating Blue Coat’s Mobile Device Security service with AirWatch’s advanced Enterprise Mobility Management capabilities, enterprises can easily extend and manage Web security policies for thousands of smartphones and tablets, protecting employees from Web-based malware and mobile application threats.

The joint solution allows customers to easily update and push content and security policies to mobile devices across the extended corporate environment. For example, a company that provides iPads with product information to its sales force can now simultaneously update content for all users while enabling its team to safely access relevant Web-based material. A company that allows employees to use their own devices to access the corporate network can now protect them from mobile malware and assure that policies are consistently enforced across all devices.

“The Blue Coat partnership with AirWatch extends our capabilities to empower enterprises to safely use the best mobile technologies and products in the market,” said Greg Clark, CEO of Blue Coat Systems. “This partnership demonstrates Blue Coat’s commitment to execute and extend our Business Assurance market leadership by tackling the toughest challenges in mobile security.”

Blue Coat and AirWatch both adopt an open architecture approach that enables customers to use best-of-breed security solutions in their existing infrastructures. This seamless integration is important for large enterprises that have deployed a diverse ecosystem of solutions to address specific security threats.

“Mobile devices in the enterprise represent a significant opportunity to enable greater productivity, reduce costs and increase efficiency, but there are real security obstacles that prevent enterprises from allowing their employees to use these devices to access the corporate network,” said Jon Oltsik, senior principal analyst at ESG. “The partnership between AirWatch and Blue Coat shows how vendors in the industry can work together to help enterprises address mobile security concerns while adopting new business initiatives.”

The AirWatch Enterprise Mobility Management solution is designed to meet the demands of large enterprises and scales to support deployments of hundreds to thousands of devices. The AirWatch solution allows enterprises to consistently manage and deliver content to all devices, regardless of location. The Blue Coat Mobile Device Security service is a core component of the Mobility Empowerment Center that helps businesses increase agility through new mobile initiatives, including corporate-driven, bring your own device and guest wifi.

“Increasingly, our customers want to embrace mobile device initiatives but face a dual challenge of managing thousands of new devices and assuring that employees can safely use those devices to access Web content and corporate data,” said John Marshall, CEO at AirWatch. “This partnership brings two industry leaders together to deliver tremendous value to our customers.”

“Dimension Data has a long standing global alliance with Blue Coat and, in January this year, signed a global partnership with AirWatch, so we welcome this exciting announcement as it complements Dimension Data’s approach to enterprise mobility,” said Jaco Hattingh, global general manager at Dimension Data. “Deploying mobility solutions is highly complex because it affects a wide range of interrelated components across a number of organizational functions. If not implemented correctly, it could impact existing IT infrastructure. When it comes to deploying mobility solutions for its clients, Dimension Data takes a comprehensive consultative-led approach, so this announcement not only aligns to and enhances our existing approach, but it also provides added benefits to our clients.”

The interoperable solution will be available in August 2013.

About Blue Coat Systems
Blue Coat empowers enterprises to safely and quickly choose the best applications, services, devices, data sources, and content the world has to offer, so they can create, communicate, collaborate, innovate, execute, compete and win in their markets. For additional information, please visit www.bluecoat.com.

Blue Coat and the Blue Coat logo are registered trademarks or trademarks of Blue Coat Systems, Inc. or its affiliates in the United States and certain other countries. All other trademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners.

About AirWatch

AirWatch is the world’s largest mobile security and enterprise mobility management provider with more than 7,000 customers and more than 1,300 global associates. The largest customer base, combined with the largest research and development team in the industry, allows AirWatch to provide the broadest functionality at the lowest cost. The AirWatch platform, featuring industry-leading mobile device management and application management, also incorporates the most secure content management solution, Secure Content Locker^™. These solutions can be used stand-alone for unique BYOD requirements or as a comprehensive, highly scalable enterprise-grade mobility platform.