Free network analysis tool helps Blue Coat partners sell services

Application delivery specialist Blue Coat Systems (BCSI) has launched a free cloud-based analysis and reporting tool for its channel partners to help them sell additional products and services.

The Blue Coat Assessment Service enables its channel partners to remotely conduct an extensive analysis of an enterprise network using a Blue Coat PacketShaper appliance.

“We don’t charge anything to the channel to partners for the service,” explains Nigel Hawthorn, VP EMEA marketing at Blue Coat, “they can even use a demo unit to conduct the analysis.”

Hawthorn highlights the costs partners typically incur for doing a network analysis with multiple site visits and potential network reconfiguration. Instead, using a PacketShaper on a spanning port, only one short site visit is required with a small subset of network data then collected and sent to the secure Assessment service in the cloud.

The service provides a detailed reporting engine and also has some intelligence to automatically detect certain types of anomalies for further investigation. Although Blue Coat don’t charge for the service, partners can  “chose to sell the service,” explains Hawthorn, “but most will offer a caveat that [the one-off analysis is free] if a customer decides to either buy a appliance or managed service at a later date,” he explains.

“There are good margins on professional services,” comments Hawthorn, “and 80 percent of network assessments find some significant problem and 80 percent of those turn into business for our channel partners,” Hawthorn adds.