"We have added a new level of granularity to voice awareness," he said. "VoIP uses a lot of different protocols. One of the challenges people have is with unsanctioned and sanctioned voice traffic."

"We can now allow the administrator to see the protocol being used. We can tell which application created that voice traffic, like a Nortel or Cisco IP-based handset, or even a soft phone like Google Talk," he said. "We have always been able to tell the difference between Skype and , but now we can differentiate down to the handset level, which created the traffic."

"Also a lot of people are looking at rolling out virtual desktops and we have gone deeper into the VDI stream," he said. "There are different types of traffic going over that stream, one is the interactive screen image, second is the log on and certification, and third is the ability to detach a virtual desktop from the server, and create an image that runs locally on say a the laptop (i.e. offline access). With the new PacketShaper, you can now manage virtual desktops, so for example to make sure that mouse movements (controlled by the user) are never held up, but a 3GB file transfer can be slowed down instead."

Version 8.5 of PacketShaper will beging shipping at the end of this month. Existing customers will be able to software the new software for free. For brand new users, a Blue Coat application solution start at around £2,000 ($3,340).

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