Acceleration technology, said several analysts, is gaining popularity among IT shops.

Joe Skorupa, an analyst at Gartner Inc. in Stamford, Conn., said WAN acceleration technology like Blue Coat's makes up about US$500 million of the $1.2 billion application appliance business. 'People are adopting Web browsers as their standard application interfaces, especially as they push applications out globally, because it makes them easier to customize,' Skorupa said. The problem with that approach is that network performance slows as traffic grows.

The biggest challenge has been how to accelerate traffic once it is encrypted, he said, something only a few vendors have done so far. In addition to Blue Coat, start-up Certeon Inc. in Burlington, Mass., offers encrypted acceleration, Skorupa said.

'Being able to accelerate secure browser [content] is becoming a bigger and bigger deal,' Skorupa said, giving Blue Coat an edge over rivals such as Expand Networks Inc., F5 Networks Inc. and Juniper Networks Inc.

Jon Oltsik, an analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group Inc. in Milford, Mass., said Blue Coat's approach -- caching static information while accelerating dynamic data with priority -- is successful at cutting the size of data transfers while increasing network speed. 'This is especially good for companies with large, geographically-distributed remote offices,' Oltsik said.