5 Key Service and Technical Support Considerations

When your business buys a new addition to its IT systems, it is also buying the company behind the product or service. Your company will look to the vendor for service and technical support as it installs the new technology, learns to operate it and uses it on a day-to-day basis.

It is imperative to know what to expect from a vendor in terms of remote technical support and service before your company buys. Here are some of the considerations that should go into the purchasing decision.

1. Who will install the product? A simple product, like a word processor, can be installed by end users without much difficulty. However, complex systems like ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) software require professional installation. Somewhere in between lie the systems that vendors and customers can install together. The question is, what remote technical support will the vendor provide during installation? Will there be on-site technicians to walk you through installation, or will you have to go it alone and call a remote technical support hotline when you get stuck?

2. Who will provide telephone remote technical support? Many vendors now outsource remote technical support overseas to people whose expertise and command of the English language may not be the best. It is always a good idea to meet the people who will be providing your company's tech support before you sign on the dotted line.

3. Is remote technical support “free” (included in the purchase price), or will there be ongoing charges based on usage? The former may seem preferable to paying by the service call. But if you don’t anticipate needing much support, going with a per-incident service plan may lower both the technology's purchase price and its overall cost of ownership.

4. If on-site service is needed, how will your business be charged? Some vendors charge for time spent traveling to and from an organization's location, while others start the clock when they get there and stop it when they leave. Certain types of service calls may be billed at a flat fee, while others might be billed by the hour and include materials charges.

5. How quick is the vendor's response time? You should negotiate with the vendor regarding how long it will take to get a service person on-site when your company places a service call. The final agreement should include some consequences if the vendor fails to meet the response-time goal. Define clearly whether you want availability 24/7 or just during business hours. If you opt for the latter, keep in mind that the business's systems could be down for more than 72 hours over a three-day weekend.

When negotiating service and technical support agreements, keep in mind that greater coverage equals greater cost. Get a line-by-line quote on each service/support feature that your company wants, and ask the vendor what the price differences will be if it settles for less.

Get all agreed service and technical support features in writing. A service or technical support agreement should spell out what the new system should do when it is working perfectly. This agreement should also detail terms covering response time, service fees, support details and so on. The more detailed the agreement is up front, the less room for finger-pointing there will be later.

source: itmanagement.com/features/5-service-support-considerations-061908/

Software Helps Companies Virtualize IT Staff with remote technical support

The only provider of appliance-based remote technical support software, today announced the release of Bomgar 10.1. The newest version of this industry leading product includes features designed to help organizations easily virtualize the people involved in IT support, enabling them to be more efficient and effective. Help desk virtualization allows support staff to remotely control and troubleshoot end user devices quickly and accurately, anywhere in the world.

Advancements in mobile technology have made telecommuting a viable option for most enterprise employees elevating such workplace flexibility as a key to recruiting quality employees. Recent changes in the global economy including rising gas prices, and the mounting costs associated with travel, are further reinforcing the attractiveness of telecommuting. For IT managers this workplace trend requires a centralized support platform that allows staff to manage issues anywhere employees or offices reside. Additionally, IT managers want to extend this new flexibility not only to enterprise employees but also to the help desk staff.

“Enterprises are already deploying virtualization in their server environments to reduce costs. Since employing IT staff is often more expensive than buying servers, it only makes sense to invest in technologies that increase the effectiveness of these highly skilled employees,” said Joel Bomgar, CEO and founder, Bomgar Corporation. “With the release of 10.1, we are giving enterprises the tools they need to effectively virtualize IT staff. The result is higher productivity, lower costs to the customer, and happier employees.”

The new version of Bomgar’s remote technical support platform helps enterprises maintain a delicate balance of keeping both users and help desk staff productive and content. With Bomgar’s support platform, IT organizations no longer have to travel onsite for routine maintenance or computing issues. Bomgar 10.1 allows IT to “virtualize” staff resources so that a representative can instantly and remotely support resolve users’ technical issues regardless of operating system or geographic location. Additionally, it allows the help desk staff to “break the chains” that tie them to the office by enabling them to provide effective troubleshooting and routine maintenance from home or on the road.

Key features include:

• Software Development Kit (SDK) for Faster Deployment of Virtualized Support: With Bomgar 10.1, the company is introducing a SDK that enables easy integration of Bomgar’s remote technical support software with existing help desk solutions. It includes instructions, methods and pre-configured pieces of code for creating customizable applications that leverage Bomgar’s software for back end solutions, such as trouble ticket systems or knowledge base software. The SDK allows Bomgar’s customers to cut down time spent integrating Bomgar with other systems by nearly 75 percent, enabling them to be up and running with a complete support application in days versus weeks.
• Macintosh Client for Support Reps to Provide the Greater Flexibility: Bomgar 10.1 includes capabilities that allow support reps to provide assistance from a Macintosh platform. The addition of this feature expands Bomgar’s IT rep platform support to all major computing operating systems.
• Administrative Dashboard to Manage Resources and Speed Time to Resolution: Bomgar has added an administrative dashboard to its 10.1 product that provides IT directors with visibility into the entire support organization, regardless of where the IT support reps are logged in from. The dashboard gives IT managers a direct view into what each rep is working on as well as what his or her workload looks like. The manager can move sessions from one representative to another to evenly distribute the call load. This helps the reps provide faster, more customized support to each end user.

"IT organizations are in a difficult position. Calls for them to do 'more with less' have become louder as fears of an economic slowdown or a recession have grown louder,” said Matt Healey, research manager, software and hardware support services program, IDC. "In this environment, it is important for IT departments to invest in tools that can improve the productivity of the support staff. I believe that the new generation of 'clientless' remote technical support tools can provide the productivity improvements that IT departments are looking for by reducing on-site visits and reducing the time required to support end users."

Source: businesswire.com/portal/site/google/?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20080624005323&newsLang=en

London School of Economics uses web-based remote support tool to improve helpdesk service

LogMeIn Rescue is a web-based remote technical support tool that enables a technician to easily connect to a remote Mac or smartphone often in fewer than 60 seconds, without pre-installing software. Rescue enables IT technicians to –remotely diagnose system issues, manage multiple simultaneous support sessions and resolve end-user issues, regardless of organizational size.

Using LogMeIn Rescue, LSE’s IT support teams are able to remotely diagnose and resolve technical issues on PCs, Macs and smartphones across campus and support staff offsite, ensuring prompt and effective support for IT incidents.

“After an extensive evaluation, LogMeIn Rescue was adopted at the start of the academic year as a key tool for delivering helpdesk services,”

said Adam Gale, IT Services senior support officer at LSE. “Rescue has been used for remotely diagnosing and resolving remote technical support issues for the LSE user-base and the tool has been easy to use -- providing all the necessary functions for the support teams to deliver first-class remote IT support.”

Rescue provides technicians with powerful but easy-to-use functionality including diagnostics of hardware and software images, as well as critical system information, file transfer and text-based end-user chat.

“The previous remote technical support tool employed by IT Services suffered from screen-freeze issues -- which depicted inaccurate screen information,” said Gale. “We believe Rescue resolved this and proved reliable and predictable, giving our IT support staff complete confidence when tackling support incidents.”
From a service delivery perspective, IT staff have been able to provide a more responsive and effective service when handling support calls.

Rescue has on occasion eliminated the need for IT staff to pay a desk-side visit to their users or for LSE staff and students to go to IT Services for assistance. “Instead we can remotely access a computer, deal with and resolve a complex issue which has been far more effective than trying to do the same over phone or email,” added Gale.

LSE IT Services currently supports a large number of staff and students in halls of residences and away from the school. Although not a distributed campus, the pilots have shown IT staff can support users no matter where they happen to be located. “Computer users at LSE have commented they felt reassured knowing an engineer is just a mouse click away,” continued Gale. “We had a particular user in France and my team was able to deliver remote technical support and dialogue all within the application.”

IT Services at LSE comprises several IT support teams, which provide IT helpdesk services to all academic and administrative staff, and research and taught-students. LSE has an IT-estate of approximately 1,700 staff and approximately 1,000 student on campus and halls of residences as well as a number of Linux, Mac and smartphone users. IT Services also supports more than 80 networked applications for the teaching, research and business functions of the school.

“The London School of Economics and Political Science is a world class centre for its concentration of teaching and research across the full range of the social, political and economic sciences and we are proud to be part of delivering the IT support solution to this iconic learning institution,” said Erik Driehuis, VP of sales, Europe, LogMeIn, Inc. “We believe LogMeIn Rescue has made it possible to more quickly, easily and cost effectively diagnose and repair hard to reach computers and the association with LSE continues that work."

source : publictechnology.net/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=16204

Move Your Business from Windows to Linux and get remote technical support

Windows Vista debuted to muffled applause, followed by lackluster sales. Up until June 30, cash-strapped businesses looking to avoid the cost of upgrading to new Vista-compatible hardware could still purchase . Now, however, Windows XP is available only as a costly "downgrade" from Windows Vista--if you buy a copy of Vista, you can install the 6-year-old XP operating system using the Vista license.

If that feels like a waste of your small business's precious IT budget, and you're still , look no further than . The latest distributions are free, easy to install, and highly customizable; they harness your existing hardware without overtaxing it; and they include a wealth of productivity applications and utilities. You may already have a closet Linux expert on staff, but if you don't, paid support is usually available at rates far less than Microsoft's.

Making the switch from Windows to Linux will incur some costs as employees and support staff adjust to the new system's configuration settings, utilities, and applications. Even so, the savings in future hardware and software upgrades could be huge.

No License, No Fee, No Problem

Though you can purchase boxed commercial versions of Linux that include support, every Linux distribution is also available for free under the terms of the open-source Once you figure out which distribution you'd like to use (see below), you can simply download, burn, and install it on as many systems as you choose. Your software licensing fee is zero, compared with the $300 per seat for the full version of Windows Vista Business Edition. And, another bonus, Linux lacks Microsoft's intrusive activation requirements.

In addition to thousands of other free applications ( for some of my favorites), most Linux distributions come with a copy of Though not a feature-for-feature substitute for Microsoft Office, OpenOffice.org definitely does the job, and for $500 less per workstation than the cost of Office Professional 2007. OpenOffice.org lacks an equivalent to Microsoft Outlook, but just about every Linux distribution includes Novell's free PIM.

A few key Windows-based applications such as AutoCAD and Photoshop lack Linux replacements, but for many office workers the missing functionality hardly merits spending $800 more for Windows and Office. Many Windows applications will run at native speed under Linux via the utility included with most distributions. For those that don't work with Wine, two more options exist: You can install a copy of Windows using one of the available free virtualization utilities, such as or you can install Linux to dual-boot with Windows.

For most distributions, the same disc will contain server applications, including the Apache Web Server, the MySQL database engine, virtualization, and support for leading commercial databases and CRM applications from companies like Oracle, Sybase, and SAP. The Samba networking software emulates Windows Server's networking features admirably, and for free, versus starting price of $999. You can even replace your costly Exchange server installation with the free, open-source .

Whether you're using desktop or server versions of Linux, the operating system is famous for one other important feature that Microsoft is still gradually adding to Windows: security. Linux is not somehow magically immune to viruses, worms, and other Internet-based attacks. However, the reality is that the vast majority of existing attacks target Windows and Windows applications. Mostly , Linux is simply not subject to most of the Internet-based malware that threatens PCs. The targets Windows.

Don't Panic at the Distro

No two Linux distributions are the same, differing mainly in how user-friendly their installers are, how willing they are to include experimental or nonstable versions of software and utilities, and how they offer access to updates.

Linux distributions also differ in how well they support your particular hardware, especially wireless networking devices and display adapters. Perhaps the easiest way to directly assess this support on your particular hardware without having to actually install Linux is to download, burn, and boot a live-CD distro. Ubuntu, OpenSuSE, and literally hundreds of other Linux distributions come in versions.

Get Help, If You Need It

The reality of operating system support is that it costs a lot of money, whether it comes from Microsoft, Apple, Novell, or Canonical. Your copy of Windows Vista comes with 90 days of remote technical support via phone, e-mail, or chat that starts the day you activate the product. After that, Microsoft charges $60 per support incident.

Commercial Linux distributions offer similar, but less expensive, support options. The community-supported OpenSuSE 11.0 comes with 90 days of installation support. For long-term support, choose SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop (currently in version 10) for $50 per year, or go with Ubuntu and buy a support contract from maker Canonical starting at

If you're already doing without dedicated support staff for Windows, one year may be all the paid support you need for Linux. Ubuntu users joke that simply googling for technical support usually results in the exact answer you're looking for on Canonical's forums.

Linux is different from Windows, but it isn't an alien life form. The human investment you make in transitioning away from expensive Windows and Office licenses may pay for itself quickly. More important, you'll be free to run the desktop and server software of your choice, on hardware you can afford.

source: pcworld.com/article/147879/move_your_business_from_windows_to_linux.html

Bosch Security Systems announced earlier this week that they have made several upgrades to their CCTV technical support center in Lancaster, Penn. On

Bosch Security Systems announced earlier this week that they have made several upgrades to their CCTV remote technical support center in Lancaster, Penn.

One of the biggest upgrades that the company made to the center was to add a team dedicated especially to solving issues related to customers with IP video surveillance products. Essentially, according to Bosch Technical Manager Don Boling, they have created "two CCTV teams," one that handles analog applications and one that handles IP.

"This structure is helping the company develop deeper expertise within each product groups’ remote technical support team," Boling said a in a prepared statement.

In addition, the center itself has been restructured to feature an open seating plan and centralized equipment racks to help encourage cooperation and sharing of information among the staff.

Source: ipsecuritywatch.com/web/online/IPSW-News/Bosch-upgrades-technical-support-center/512$14716

Beware of Hidden Costs When Purchasing Mobile Home Park Software and Remote Technical Support

These updates can include new features as well as “bug fixes.” Charging for these updates is standard practice, but you can find companies that provide these updates for free. Some companies force the user to purchase updates even if their software is running fine. They force the issue by refusing to do remote technical support for the user unless they have purchased the latest version. A more reasonable approach is to provide the remote technical support and, if it is discovered that a problem the user is experiencing has been fixed in a later version, to notify the user. The user can make their own decision whether they want to find a work-around for the problem or to go ahead with the purchase of the corrected and newest version of the mobile home park software.

Additional Feature Modules:

Many software companies have a standard price, but additional and often necessary features cost extra and can really increase the price. Look for software which includes all of the features you need, or make sure to add up the additional costs when you are making price comparisons.

Technical Support:

Technical support represents a very important ongoing relationship with the software vendor. Most companies offer a user manual included with the software but this is often not enough when you are confused about how to use the software or are experiencing an error in the software. It is important that the vendor has free or low cost options for remote technical support for those with a quick question or error to report. For example, there may be a free user forum or free email remote technical support. All software has occasional errors. A vendor that allows you to report errors without penalizing you by charging for reporting the error is a must.

It is important that the software vendor offer some type of telephone support for those who don’t want to search the manual. For those who need to get back to business quickly and want to be able to pick up the phone for quick answers, a telephone support plan is useful. Telephone support is almost always a paid option. However, the cost of this telephone support can reflect on the software program. Software vendors must maintain some sort of recurring revenue from their customers in order to stay in business, and to pay their trained technical support representatives.

However, if the telephone support is overly expensive, it may suggest that the software is full of errors and requires a lot of hours spent working with technical support.

Software Supplies:

Often a software vendor will add features into the software which require you to purchase more products from them. For example, a software program that offers a check printing feature may require that you use their printing company to purchase check forms that are compatible with the software’s banking feature. Other companies will also offer an alternative and less expensive option, such as the option to use checks compatible with QuickBooks or other software for which it is easy and inexpensive to purchase check stock.

Value Added Services:

Many software programs offer value added services embedded in their mobile home park software. For example, there may be a credit card processing service that will process payments for you. Often the software company itself receives a portion of the user’s cost for each use of the feature. You need to decide if you can get the feature less expensively elsewhere or if the added cost is worth the convenience of the feature interacting seamlessly with your software.

Source :prudentpressagency.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=4636

NetApp Pushes remote technical support Performance

NetApp unveiled new products this week with a message that could be summed up in a word: performance.

The new offerings, which include midrange unified storage systems and a storage acceleration appliance, are aimed at helping data centers and high-performance computing environments do more with less. NetApp cites as target markets software development, product lifecycle management, electronic design automation, healthcare, energy, media/entertainment and government.

"It's all about time to market with these environments, and that's where performance really helps," said Patrick Rogers, NetApp's vice president for solutions marketing.

NetApp claims its new FAS3140 and FAS3170 storage systems offer better performance and scalability than other midrange systems, and the company included a benchmark showing that the FAS3170 outperformed the EMC Celerra NS80G in a file services workload benchmark
The FAS3140 scales to 420TB and the FAS3170 to 420TB, and both support and offer eight I/O slots.

The company also unveiled the new V-Series V3140 and V3170, which it says extends virtualization to other vendors' legacy arrays and uses the same Data ONTAP operating system as other NetApp FAS systems.

The Storage Acceleration Appliances, which include the SA200, SA300 and SA600, are based on NetApp FlexCache technology. Rogers said the appliances can double throughput while reducing latency. They can be used to accelerate performance at the data center where the central data repository is located or to improve response time and enhance collaboration within Remote Technical Support offices.

NetApp is also offering a Performance Acceleration Module, an add-on intelligent read cache for optimizing performance of mainstream storage platforms and random-read intensive workloads such as file serving. One or more modules fit into PCI Express slots of an existing storage controller, where they function as a read cache to increase throughput and reduce latency without having to add additional disk drives to increase I/O rates. The module consumes 95 percent less power than a shelf of Fibre Channel disk drives.

NetApp also introduced Remote Technical Support Agent, an intelligent Remote Technical Supportdiagnostics data collector embedded in NetApp systems, which will proactively open support tickets and let NetApp support engineers remotely access system log files to diagnose and resolve issues.

List prices for the FAS3100 storage systems start at $69,780 for 7TB of storage, while the V3100 systems start at $56,365 with no storage included. The Performance Acceleration Module lists at $15,000, and the software for the module is $20,000. One software license is required for each storage controller, and between one and five modules can be installed in the controller, depending on the model. Pricing for the Storage Acceleration Appliance models varies depending on the configurations, number of disk shelves and Performance Acceleration Modules.

Source : enterpriseitplanet.com/storage/news/article.php/3752806