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MIT's IS&T department supports more than 20,000 students, faculty, and staff throughout the entire campus. While the MIT Computing Helpdesk provides email and phone support, the Departmental IT Resource (DITR) team provides on-site assistance to clients around the campus. Up until the very end of 2007, more than 30 percent of the DITR's support calls required on-site assistance – a major headache for the technicians who had to drive back and forth between each call. This method of technical assistance was also frustrating for users who often had to wait for an hour or more to get their issues resolved.
"Our campus is the size of a small city, and parking is very limited," said Chuck King, Team Leader in the DITR. "We were spending way too much time traveling back and forth across campus. We would be parked on one side of campus and get a support call from the other side. We'd have to get into our car, drive to the other side of campus, circle the lot a few times to find parking, assist the user, etc. and then the cycle would start all over again. It was just not an effi cient use of our time."
The team needed a remote support solution that would enable them to support any kind of computer on virtually any kind of operating system, in any location throughout campus. MIT evaluated solutions from a number of vendors, including Bomgar, pcAnywhere and Citrix Online's GoToAssist. The organization selected Bomgar's appliance-based remote support software for several reasons, including platform accessibility, on-premise deployment model, and overall ease-of-use of the solution for both the support rep and the user.
"We have to provide support to all of our users regardless of what operating platform they use. We did not want to have to purchase separate products to support each of these operating systems," said King. "Bomgar gives us the ability to support Windows, Linux and Mac environments all with the same software tool."
MIT also appreciated Bomgar's on-premise deployment model, which involves an appliance that the university can operate within their own environment, instead of relying on a third-party to host sensitive staff and student information. "With Bomgar, we have control over the appliance and all of the data that is routed through it. This was very important to us and a critical factor in our decision to go with Bomgar," said King.
According to King, Bomgar's remote support solution has been a tremendous asset to MIT. "Our consultants really like the ease-of-use of the interface. They are able to remotely access a user's machine, diagnose the problem, and quickly restore service for that user. In addition, our end users have commented on the system's ease of use. They love the fact that we can resolve their issues remotely in minutes instead of hours or days."
With the remote support capabilities within Bomgar, MIT was able to dramatically reduce the number of dispatches that were required and therefore improve the productivity of its IT staff. Eliminating crosscampus support trips with an easy-to-use remote support system has helped the organization maintain high levels of service for the many staff and students who depend on them.
"Overall, we're really pleased with the Bomgar solution," said King. "It has helped my team resolve more computing issues in less time, which makes both the team and our users very happy. Everyone is really enjoying it so far."
So what's next? King is planning to expand the use of Bomgar, leveraging the system's session recording and exit survey capabilities to augment training for his staff. "We get similar issues that crop up frequently, and we're planning to use session recordings and report analysis to update our Wiki so that we can resolve these issues more quickly in the future."
The mission for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts is to advance knowledge and educate students in science, technology, and other areas of scholarship that will best serve the nation and the world in the 21st century.
Based in Ridgeland, Miss., Bomgar Corporation specializes in appliance-based solutions for remote desktop support. Bomgar allows companies to connect to remote clients and co-workers via the Internet anywhere in the world, in less than 10 seconds. The company is the only provider in the industry offering an appliance-based solution, providing companies with an unparalleled level of security and the ability to scale efficiently. Backed by venture capital, Bomgar has grown steadily since its inception in 2003, securing more than 4,000 customers in all 50 states in the US and over 45 countries, in addition to resellers in Canada, South Africa and the U.K.
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