Service providers are facing unprecedented competitive challenges due to the rising commodization of their traditional transport services and the growing uncertainty surrounding today's turbulent financial markets. In response to these intensifying pressures, a growing number of service providers are offering a widening array of managed services to deliver greater value to their customers by helping them better manage their IT operations. In order to satisfy customers' escalating needs and expectations, service providers must implement new technologies to address their application and security management requirements. They must also provide service level agreements (SLAs) which clearly demonstrate their application-level performance.

This whitepaper will discuss these managed service trends and challenges, and will identify the steps to success to meet customers' escalating application and security requirements. We will also examine how Blue Coat Systems' integrated approach to application delivery network solutions are responding to these requirements, and provide examples showing how Blue Coat solutions are helping managed service providers (MSPs) clearly differentiate themselves in today's rapidly evolving market.