The report notes that, “Blue Coat’s application delivery strategy combining acceleration, visibility and control is proving successful in enterprise and service provider accounts… Blue Coat has successfully leveraged the Packeteer acquisition by expanding channel partners as well as by beginning to encourage its channel partners to sell an integrated application delivery solution to customers that includes visibility, security and acceleration.”

While the WAN application delivery market was largely appliance-based in 2009, virtual appliances accounted for $20 million, or 2.1 percent, of the overall market, driven by customer interest in flexibly and quickly deploying application acceleration. Last month, Blue Coat introduced the ProxySG® Virtual Appliance, a software-based version of its industry-leading WAN optimization technology that can run as a virtualized instance on industry standard servers.

According to IDC, the WAN application delivery market will grow to $1.5 billion in 2014, up from $970.3 million in 2009, in response to new demands on the network as enterprises attempt to meet the requirements for video, voice and enterprise applications. As the market evolves, IDC expects to see WAN application delivery solutions provide not just bandwidth cost savings but also visibility and control to support new enterprise initiatives and traffic makeup.