The latter may prove more relevant in the long term as Blue Coat begins to act on the strategy it has been crafting since September, when the company introduced new CEO Gary Clark. Blue Coat, which Clark says is now in its third consecutive quarter for growth and has "more ability to invest aggressively" as a private company, is no longer trying to compete with and Riverbed head-to-head. That's because Blue Coat has identified a new market in which it is prepared to get a significant head start, Clark says.

"Cisco is not really what keeps us up at night around here at Blue Coat. We are laser focused on playing our game, which is really around the asymmetric piece where really Cisco and Riverbed don't have a strong play, " Clark says. "We don't want to go back and be a 'me too' player in the -to-data center symmetric optimization game."

The main difference between the symmetric and asymmetric deployment of WAN optimization solutions involves the environment in which they are deployed. Symmetric optimization, as described in this , is deployed across two codependent devices in two different locations, such as the data centers where Riverbed's products are commonly found. Asymmetric deployment of WAN optimization is delivered from a centrally located device and focuses on performance at the user or application level.

Murphy says an important factor of this new step into the asymmetric acceleration market is integrating features into its WAN optimization tools. With security as a differentiator in its asymmetric WAN optimization products, Blue Coat can capitalize on a window of opportunity that will remain open for "at least six to 12 months, if not longer than that."

Corbo believes the security push will be a successful differentiator for Blue Coat in the WAN optimization market, primarily because any other approach would simply fall flat against powerful market incumbents.