Blue Coat Systems
 |
|
| Private | |
| Traded as | (1996-2011) NASDAQ: BCSI |
| Industry | Network Security |
| Predecessor | CacheFlow |
| Founded | 1996 |
| Founder | Mike Malcolm |
| Headquarters | Sunnyvale, California, United States |
|
Key people
|
Gregory Clark, businessman (CEO) Michael Fey, (President and COO) |
| Products | ProxySG, Advance Threat Protection (ATP) System, SSL Visibility Appliance, MACH5, K9 Web Protection, PacketShaper, CacheFlow |
| Revenue | $598 million GAAP |
|
Number of employees
|
1,700+ |
| Website | www |
Blue Coat Systems Inc., formerly CacheFlow, is a corporation headquartered in Sunnyvale, California and owned by Symantec. It provides hardware, software, and services designed for cybersecurity and network management.
Blue Coat was founded in 1996 as Cacheflow, a business focused on caching appliances for internet service providers. After several rounds of funding, it filed an initial public offering (IPO) in 1999. Slow adoption of caching technology led to continued losses. In August 2002, the company changed its focus to internet security appliances and was renamed Blue Coat Systems. The company returned to private ownership in 2011, when it was acquired by Thoma Cressey Bravo. It was then sold to Bain Capital in March 2015 and Symantec in 2016.
Blue Coat's products have received generally positive reviews in lab tests. They are sometimes used by repressive regimes for censorship and surveillance.
Blue Coat was founded in March 1996 in Redmond, Washington by Mike Malcolm, Joe Pruskowski and Doug Crow, under the name CacheFlow. $1 million in seed capital was raised from angel investors, in order to develop caching appliances that would increase how fast websites load by storing frequently accessed web data in cache.
Malcolm hired former employees from Scaleable Software to create the CacheFlow operating system. After completing product testing that October, investors purchased 25 percent of the company with $2.8 million in venture funding. Another $6 million was raised the following December and $8.7 million in March 1999. The company hired Brian Nesmith as President and Chief Executive Officer that month. Another $3.1 million in shares was purchased in November 1999 by Marc Andressen, whose reputation led to increased interest in the company's IPO.
In mid-1998, the company made its first sales, earning just $809,000 over three months, and investors started pushing for an initial public offering (IPO). The company filed an IPO the following November. CacheFlow was not yet profitable and the company itself said the market for caching appliances was still unproven. Despite having $6 million in annual losses, the stock price rose from $24 a share to $126 in the first day of trading and $161 by October 2000. At the time, analysts were expecting a large market for caching appliances, due to widespread frustration with internet speeds.
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Wikipedia