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Responsible for all things technology in a school district of 700 employees, 3,000 systems, and 10 sites throughout Minidoka County, Minidoka County School District's three-man IT team had its work cut out. The geographic dispersal of the schools often required travel across the county to resolve support incidents, stretching the team's limited manpower and forcing employees to wait for long periods before a support rep could fix their problems.
Minidoka used a clientless remote control service for support, but the solution was severely limited. "We were very frustrated with the program," said Technology Supervisor Kent Jackson. "It was a plugin in Internet Explorer. You had to use IE, and if you shut down the browser, you lost your connection. We have a web-enhanced curriculum program with Adobe Flash®, Macromedia Authorware™, and other plugins, and to add those plugins you had to restart the browser, and you lost the connection. You had to have a phone connection with the person on the other end to get them to restart the session when you closed the browser."
While doing some outside consulting work, a client introduced Jackson to Bomgar™ (then NetworkStreaming) software, and Jackson was impressed with the difference between its performance and initiation process versus that of Minidoka's existing remote control solution. And unlike the previous solution, Bomgar™ runs as a system service, enabling Minidoka's tech support team to restart browsers for plugin installation. Running as a system service also enabled the team to reboot and automatically reconnect to remote computers without requiring customers to reinitiate a remote control session. Especially useful, according to Jackson, were the Push to Start Session and Session Recording features: "I love the recording ability. You can record the sessions, go back and watch everything, and pull up chat transcripts."
In July of 2006, Minidoka purchased the Bomgar Box™ and installed it at their technology office. "We had it up and running almost instantly," said Jackson. "Bomgar™ sent us the box, we plugged it in, and from there we've been running with it." Since they were familiar with other remote support solutions already, zero training was necessary: "We just needed the addresses and login names and we figured it out for ourselves." Because of poor internet quality in the region, deploying
the appliance on-site also had a performance advantage for Minidoka. "We like the fact that the appliance could be installed on-site," said Jackson. "We can still do support without having access to our vendor's website."
Since implementing the Bomgar Box™, Minidoka's IT team has experienced a dramatic increase in productivity, as support requests from any of the 10 sites can be answered immediately. Bomgar™ has been used extensively in the software upgrade process: "We have a grading program that comes out with an upgrade that will automatically sync the grades to the server so parents can log in and see the grades and attendance of the students." said Jackson. "So we'll send out the upgrade, but most of the teachers have problems and send in a request for us to upgrade them." With Bomgar™, these requests can be executed remotely without a long wait for the end-user.
Using Bomgar™, the team has reduced on-site support visits by 98 percent, and resolution of support incidents on the first call has risen by 90 percent. This has increased call handling capacity exponentially: "We went from five issues a day to over 80," said Jackson. It has also enabled Minidoka to save money over its previous remote support solution, gaining return on investment after only six months. Jackson estimates that the cost savings over having no remote support solution at all occurred after only one month due to reduced travel costs related to on-site computer repair.
With Bomgar™, three overworked IT personnel can keep their 3,000-system organization running smoothly. "Without this system, things just didn't get done," said Jackson. "We would travel to one of these 10 schools and sit at one computer in one classroom. There may be 30 machines in the school that need help, but you can't go to the others until you're finished with that one, so you're running around like mad. But now I can practically do all 30 machines at the same time. I can jump all over the building, and not just one building, but over all 10 sites, so if I get a request from an employee, I can help them right away."
Located in the Snake River Plain of Southern Idaho, Minidoka County Joint School District promotes academic excellence, ethical integrity, and personal responsibility in students from the elementary level through high school.
Bomgar™ is the only provider of appliance-based remote desktop support solutions, offering greater security and lower total cost of ownership. With the Bomgar Box™, Bomgar's clients can eliminate monthly fees and enhance the security of their helpdesks.
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