A

s the number of Internet users in Indonesia grows, service providers are faced with the challenge of providing better services without overcharging users. However, given the fact that most content servers are located outside the country, largely in the US and Europe, high bandwidth costs remain one of the most difficult problems to address.

The Jakarta Post’s Rangga D. Fadillah talks with Blue Coat’s vice president for service providers in the Asia Pacific and Middle East, Matt Bennet, and the company’s ASEAN service provider sales manager, KY Lee, on its new product, CacheFlow Appliance 5000 series, which has been promoted as being capable of reducing bandwidth costs while accelerating the speed of Internet connections.

Question: Can you give us a snapshot of your company and your new product, the CacheFlow Appliance 5000 series?

Answer: (Matt Bennett) Blue Coat has been around for about 15 years. We are an appliance company providing web security and acceleration. We are a US$500 million US company. Our head office for the Asia Pacific is in Singapore. As many as 98 of the world’s top 100 companies are our customers.

The CacheFlow 5000 appliance recognizes the changes in the Internet. Two or three years ago, caching was something that might not be done because it was not highly prioritized. If you look at the Internet trends now you see that videos have become dominant in Internet play. How we share content and how we use content is changing. We share content on a much higher level. That means the service providers face huge demand as well as a surge in the degree of bandwidth they must provide. Providers are not earning more money because users do not say, “I understand you provide me more content so I think I can accept increases in my monthly payment”. The service providers are in a battle over how to best service clients while continuing to make enough money to justify business decisions. Cacheflow comes to that as an appliance that brings basic caching into the next generation. Basic caching brings content close to users, while the next generation of caching is about understanding how content is stored and understanding the website. That is where Blue Coat comes in, because we are a dynamic cache provider.

For us and other service providers, we are trying to do two things. We cut costs by managing international bandwidth and we are driving revenues by providing a higher level of service to users.

In the Middle East, for instance, we team up with the majority of telecommunication and communication (telcom) companies. We filter the majority of content. In Southeast Asia, we have done a lot of work with telcom providers. In Thailand, for example, there are similar restrictions on content that you also have in Indonesia, where you have to track and show what users are doing. If you try to deliver compliance without caching, the Internet will slow and users will run away. It’s a challenge for providers on how they become compliant without killing their user base. Caching is the answer.

KY Lee: We have been in Indonesia since 2007. We have many types of customers in the country, from enterprises to service providers. In Indonesia, some of the enterprises that use our products include Toyota Motors and Yamaha Motors. The target market for our new CacheFlow 5000 is enabling service providers to improve the customers’ experience while they are using the Internet for watching videos, playing games and downloading.

In simple terms, what is caching technology?

Lee: If we want to download movies or watch videos, you are accessing the real servers that may be somewhere outside of Indonesia. For example, you know one of the most expensive costs for telcom companies is installing the submarine cables between here and the US or Europe. The cost is passed down to the users. What we do with this product is bring content closer to customers. So the first person accessing the Internet to watch a video will go all the way to US and then we save the copy of the content locally — exactly the same copy. Then the second person who watches the same video watches it locally. It is much faster and it saves the bandwidth cost between Indonesia and the US.

Do you see government restrictions on several types of Internet content hindering your business?

Lee: The additional thing that we cover is basically helping address government compliance, including filtering certain websites. We help telcom companies achieve that while providing the benefit of faster downloads to their end-users. We can offer a platform to service providers to block sites according to government regulations and also help them save on Internet costs. It’s the same platform as CacheFlow 5000.

Bennett: In the UK, for instance, Vodafone uses Blue Coat technology to prevent children from accessing certain content on phones.