So there’s loads of stuff on the net about the upcoming merger between BlueCoat and Packeteer. I’m going to add my own 2p to the thoughts, as I think that this is a potentially large issue for users of Packetshaper, iShared and SkyX devices from the Packeteer stable.
Some of the other comment on this merger is available at the pages are shown below:
- Blue Coat pockets Packeteer for $268m | The Register
- Blue Coat vows to fund the heck out of PacketShaper | The Register
- Packeteer > News > Press Releases
- Blue Coat Announces Private Placement of $80 Million in Convertible Notes to Partially Fund the Acquisition of Packeteer | Blue Coat Systems, Inc.
So apart from the credit crunch meaning that BlueCoat has to go to Packeteer’s shareholders to fund the acquisition based on future value of the BlueCoat stock, there are some other other things that should make current Packeteer users worry.
A previous BlueCoat acquisition was the NetCache arm of NetApp, which was being sold off in June 2006. At the time NetCache was lagging in features behind the BlueCoat ProxySG devices, and the acquisition was basically for the customer base.
Shortly after the NetCache line was declared end-of-life, and the migration of the NetCache user base to ProxySG was started. This is still continuing, with many NetCache customers still not moving over, but continuing to run on the old platform as they are comfortable with it, and then re-evaluating other choices when the devices are out of maintenance.
So I’m expecting a similar behaviour, with potentially the ProxySG line taking some of the application discovery elements from the Packetshaper products, and potentially offering some shaping of traffic.
I’d also expect to see the Mach5 product take some of the SkyX and iShared capabilities, but perhaps not too many of these, as some features (particularly from the SkyX solution) are quite esoteric.
And the process of integrating products is never simple, as codebases and internal API structures are different, and it’s sometimes simpler, quicker and most importantly cheaper to re-engineer a function rather than to port it entirely.
