MUMBAI, INDIA: Blue Coat Systems, Inc., WAN application delivery and secure web gateway, released the results of a market study on networking trends of Asia Pacific companies.

Over 40 percent of the respondents surveyed for the study indicated their companies provide their branch offices with direct Internet access, rather than ”backhaul” the Internet traffic across a Wide Area Network (WAN) to a centralised Internet gateway in the headquarters or regional data centre.

Over 1,100 Asia Pacific companies participated in the survey, which was conducted online by Blue Coat in August 2008. The survey explored topics regarding branch office Internet access, work force mobilisation and consolidation of datacentres.

Respondents to the survey included IT professionals from companies in Australia; Bangladesh; Greater China; India; Indonesia; Malaysia; New Zealand; Pakistan; Philippines; Singapore; Sri Lanka; South Korea; Taiwan; Thailand; Vietnam; and Japan.

In India, the survey was conducted with over 120 companies and the findings revealed that as compared to 40 percent of Asia Pacific companies, 46 percent of Indian companies provide branch offices with direct Internet access.

However, more than 50 percent of branch office internet traffic is still backhauled over the wide area network, and 70 percent of companies would want to provide the same level of protection at the branch office as in headquarters or data centres.

Although, a significant number of companies still backhaul branch office Internet traffic hundreds or thousands of miles to a remote data centre or headquarters over private or semi-private data lines, a growing number of companies have established local Internet service at the branch and receive direct Internet access there.

Some companies have local Internet access, but route all corporate traffic directly to headquarters or a data centre using a site-to-site VPN, which serves as the WAN link, and do not allow access to the web in the local branch office.

Matt Young, vice president, Asia Pacific, Blue Coat Systems, said: “We see a significant number of companies that either have branch offices with direct Internet access or are in the process of migrating to such access, rather than relying on backhauling that traffic to a centralised access point across the WAN. Companies are rejecting the high cost and inefficiencies of backhauling Internet traffic. With Blue Coat appliances, companies can gain ‘direct-to-the-net’ branch office access while maintaining consistent, centrally-managed security and control by using the same appliance that provides WAN optimisation. We enable companies to migrate away from backhauling to direct Internet connections in the branch.”