Running Blind

We've talked in previous blog posts about the importance of visibility into the traffic that's running across our proxy environments. This is especially important with the different applications that can run over our port 80, the port that most organizations tend to allow traffic through regardless of the application.

Network World reminded us this week, that too many of us run blind with our applications and discussed a panel at InterOp this past May on Application Performance Management. The topic talked about how it was impossible to manage application performance without visibility into the traffic that traverses the WAN.

Blue Coat Systems, one of the proxy vendors we've talked about on this blog also has seen the need for visibility, and that was one of their driving factors in acquiring Packeteer last year. Since buying Packeteer, Blue Coat has been pitching the Application Delivery Network and the importance of visibility in application delivery.

Network World is seeking out reader opinion on this subject and whether they (the readers) have been able to find tools to provide visibility into their WAN traffic. It'll be interesting to see the results of their request.