Blue Coat Assessment Service

The Assessment Service cloud-based reporting and analytical service enables Blue Coat channel partners to remotely conduct an extensive analysis of an enterprise network.

Users can deploy a PacketShaper appliance in the network of a customer in 30 min 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 can reveal how a company’s wide area network (WAN) and internet connections are used and provide visibility into: root causes of poor application performance; bandwidth consumed by recreational or non-business applications and performance impact on business-critical applications; causes of peak bandwidth consumption and its effects on other traffic; amount of bulk application traffic that would benefit from WAN optimisation; use and prevalence of social media applications; network traffic and use patterns.

The assessment service enables remote application delivery assessments, with all analysis of customer traffic and application patterns taking place in the cloud. The user receives a detailed report including colour graphs and ‘smart’ content.