Blue Lane’s Successful Experience With Microsoft’s Interop Labs Demonstrates the Value of the Microsoft Communications Protocol Programs

Blue Lane Technologies successfully runs and evaluates protocol test cases at Microsoft’s Enterprise Engineering Center.

REDMOND, Wash., and Cupertino, Calif. — Microsoft Corp. today announced that Blue Lane Technologies Inc. was able to successfully observe, evaluate and process a wide variety of key Microsoft® protocols such as SMB, SMB2, Kerberos Authentication and Content Indexing at Microsoft’s Enterprise Engineering Center (EEC) facilities. Microsoft’s EEC, established in Redmond, Wash., in 2002, hosted Blue Lane, and the companies jointly conducted a series of tests designed to help partners, internal business groups and customers interoperate with Microsoft protocols.

Blue Lane Technologies provides solutions that help optimize business operations with their inline patch proxy for enterprise servers. Its solution eliminates the need to hastily install patches on enterprise servers. Hundreds of servers located behind a Blue Lane appliance can have their protocol traffic patched, requiring no code or configuration changes to servers, thereby maximizing server stability and uptime. Blue Lane Technologies has licensed the Microsoft Communications Protocol Program (MCPP) protocols associated with the Proxy/Firewall Task.

In a battery of more than 3,000 tests, Blue Lane’s solution was able to demonstrate its knowledge of various Microsoft protocols and prove its ability to accurately process them and ensure that the network server traffic was acceptable with no false positives.

“We are very pleased with the openness and cooperation of Microsoft in both inviting us into their labs and subjecting our solution to some of the most rigorous testing offered by any vendor for third-party solutions,” said Allwyn Sequeira, senior vice president at Blue Lane. “Microsoft has clearly demonstrated its strategic interest in improving server security and promoting interoperability with third-party solutions. They are to be commended for this effort, which sets an admirable example for others to follow.”

“Microsoft provided us with the opportunity to test on every available platform, ranging from Windows® 95 to the latest Windows Server® 2008, and a large number of other test programs. The capture data we obtained demonstrated interoperability across every tested platform,” said Rohit Toshniwal, manager of research at Blue Lane Technologies.

Using the documentation made available under the MCPP, Blue Lane’s team was able to verify its understanding of various Microsoft protocols and confirm that it can accurately process the Microsoft protocols currently supported by the company’s products.

“It was a great experience hosting Blue Lane in our Interop labs. We gained valuable insight that will help us in organizing similar engagements in the future with other customers,” said Darryl Welch, principal program manager of the Microsoft Protocol Programs team. Other companies interested in participating can contact Microsoft at infodoc@microsoft.com.

More information about Microsoft Protocol Programs is available at http://www.microsoft.com/protocols.