Blue coat systems has announced the Blue coat  assessment service, a new cloud-based reporting and analytical service that enables Blue coat channel partners to easily and remotely conduct an extensive analysis of an enterprise network using a Blue coat  packet shaper  appliance. The Blue coat value-added resellers (VARs) and consultants can deploy a packet shaper appliance in the network of a customer or prospective customer in 30 minutes or less and then, at the conclusion of a data collection period, typically seven days, use the cloud service to perform the analysis of the network traffic.

The assessment from packet shaper appliances can reveal surprising details about how a company’s Wide Area Network (WAN) and Internet connections are used. One partner, Carl Sockwell from Logista solutions remarked, “I can finally see what I was supposed to know already,” after performing an assessment. Reports from the Blue coat assessment service provide critical visibility into:

1.)Root causes of poor application performance

2.)Bandwidth consumed by recreational or non-business applications and the performance impact on business-critical applications

3.)Causes of peak or “bursty” bandwidth consumption and its effects on other traffic

4.)Amount of bulk application traffic that would benefit from WAN optimisation

5.)Use and prevalence of social media applications

6.)Network traffic and utilization patterns

“The new blue coat assessment service brings application delivery network assessments within easy reach of enterprises and organizations and opens up a revealing level of detail where there had previously been a severe lack of knowledge,” said Steve House, senior director, visibility solutions, Blue coat systems.

The blue coat assessment service enables remote application delivery assessments, with all analysis of customer traffic and application patterns taking place in the cloud. The partner receives a detailed, twelve-page report including colour graphs and “smart” content that partners can augment with their own insights and brand with their own logo and contact information.

The blue coat assessment service is available August 16, 2010 to Blue coat partners and can be used in conjunction with the “Blue Box” evaluation program to provide Packet shaper appliances on a trial basis to qualified customers.