Blue Coat Systems, the technology leader in Application Delivery Networking, has announced that it has expanded the number of applications that Blue Coat PacketShaper appliances can discover, classify and prioritize.  With the addition of the new plug-in that can identify traffic from online radio service Spotify, Blue Coat continues to invest in the PacketShaper appliance and enable businesses to control the applications running on their network.

“Visibility is fundamental to optimizing application performance and we intend to continue to invest in our PacketShaper appliances to provide enterprises with an expanded view into the applications that are running on their networks,” said Carrie Oakes, vice president of product management and marketing at Blue Coat Systems.  “Granular visibility is the lynchpin in the Blue Coat Application Delivery Network infrastructure and provides enterprises with the actionable intelligence they need to optimize application performance and align IT investments with business requirements.”

Spotify is a proprietary peer-to-peer streaming music application that utilizes client computers to create a library of music.  Spotify has more than one million users and is currently available in the U.K., Finland, Sweden, Norway, France and Spain, and is expected to launch elsewhere, including in the U.S.  According to Spotify, average listening times are over an hour per user per day and the recommended bandwidth requirement is 256 Kbps.

Network managers can utilize Blue Coat PacketShaper appliances to discover and control Spotify by limiting bandwidth for the application, blocking it or reducing its priority to protect the performance of other business applications.

PacketShaper appliances can identify more than 600 applications – from flash and peer-to-peer to Oracle and Facebook – that are running on the network and monitor more than 100 metrics of every application session.  With this in-depth visibility, network managers can apply granular controls in the form of bandwidth guarantees, prioritization and quality of service to business applications, such as video conferencing or customer resource management systems, to ensure recreational applications do not interfere with the performance of those that are critical to the business.

With the visibility that PacketShaper appliances provide, network managers can set and enforce corporate IT policies to optimize and accelerate business applications and block or limit non-business applications.   Blue Coat offers unmatched visibility into the performance and security of applications running across the network, providing enterprises with the control they need to contain costs, enhance business productivity and respond quickly to changing business requirements.

Availability: The new software plug-in for Spotify is available immediately and is free of charge to customers with a current maintenance agreement.