Originally posted on November 25, 2005
Abstract Remote Support
I’ve decided, since I am not being supervised, to wax eloquent (definition: (n) longer than necessary) on a pet topic and then contrive a way deus ex machina to relate the topic to remote support and NetworkStreaming.
The concept of purposely hiding information is fascinating to me (and before you start sending me email, let me explain). More accurately stated, the concept is abstraction and it under girds pretty much everything in technology. A crude, incomplete definition would be that abstraction enables someone to interact with complexity without having to understand or even be aware of the complexity. Examples of this are legion within the technology world. When you woke up this morning and drove to work…Wait! You didn’t even think about it and may not have really been aware of it, but you turned a key to start an internal combustion engine with thousands of parts all working in concert just to help you get down your driveway! If you had to know how all that stuff worked to drive a car, then horses would still be the primary means of transportation. That’s the concept of abstraction rolled up and served to you: thousands of parts, tens of thousands of interactions, all directed by a key and a few simple controls.
Steve McConnell, Fred Brooks, and other gurus of the software development world have recognized abstraction and information hiding as the only means by which technology (specifically software development, but the principle applies) can manage complexity. The sad fact is that any technology worth using is too complex for any one mind to grasp all at once. You can think about one part or the other, but not all parts simultaneously. There are too many parts, too many facts, too many acronyms, and darn too many interactions to fit into one brain at a given time. The way you manage this complexity is to abstract a level or two above the underlying complexity so that all you have to think about at any given time is the interface without having to worry about the mass intricacies below.
If this rule applies to geeky software developers who tend to thrive on complexity, think of what it means for the average Joe. Most people don’t want to know how stuff works as long as it works. Every day I turn on a light switch, boot up, check my email, and surf the internet without really thinking (or wanting to think) about circuits, BIOS, SMTP, or DNS. This is both a necessity (because I don’t have time) and a coping mechanism (because otherwise I would go crazy). When bombarded with a ton of information, the brain has to pick and choose what it responds to and what it doesn’t. Abstraction makes this a lot easier.
So how does all this relate to remote support? I’m glad you asked. As I’ve alluded to in some previous posts, the job of computer support has increased in complexity in the same ratio as computer technology. The rate at which new technologies are added is astounding, but the support professional is still obliged to keep pace. The tools used for remote support don’t really make the supported technologies any less complex, but it’s certainly helpful if the tool doesn’t add to the complexity.
Shameless plug: NetworkStreaming’s SupportDesk supports abstraction in a couple of ways. On the one hand, it is nearly fool-proof for a user to grant remote control for support. They just click a link and it works from there. On the other hand, because it works through corporate firewalls and doesn’t require a software client to be pre-installed on the remote computer, the support rep doesn’t have to wade through a slew of possible solutions before finding something that might work. Any computer that he or she support, he or she can remote control.
A hospital that is a client of ours has nine thousand PCs connected to its network in some way or another. That includes administrative terminals, office desktops, doctor’s laptops, and a host of others. The hundred or so support staff used to have to pull on about three different solutions to try and gain control of a given computer and hope that the naming conventions were being followed. Now they have one method for supporting every user, whether the user is on their network, needs remote support on the road, or at home behind a Linksys firewall. Abstraction at work.
