Remote Support in 2007: Solution Requirements

Nathan McNeill, VP of Product Management, Bomgar™:
So, with that let me go through the general requirements of remote control. Obviously, you want something that allows you full desktop remote control. Let the rep see and interact with the remote PC. Kind of a no-brainer. You also want something that allows you to have an observe only mode. So, instead of gaining full remote control of the remote PC, allowing you view only access to the PC. There's certain customers that may not be comfortable with you taking full remote control. For those, it's essential to at least be able to see their screen.

You also want a solution that offers an unattended connection option. With our Bomgar™ product we have two such options. One is if you're within the same LAN or WAN as the remote PC that you want to support, we offer a push and start feature that allows you, without having a preinstalled clients on those PCs, to push and automatically connect to the PCs on your network. We also have a separate product called AccessDesk that does require a client to be installed but does give you access to unattended PCs that are outside your network. You're also looking for a solution that offers a session transfer feature so you can transfer remote support sessions from one rep to another or share sessions so you have more than one rep viewing and collaborating over a single session. It can really help with workflow.

Some other general requirements for architecture are that it does not have a preinstalled client. It absolutely, positively, must be zero footprint. You don't want to have to install a client on all the PCs that you may or may not support. You don't want to have to maintain that client and you certainly don't want to have to license that client. It can get incredibly expensive when you think about the thousands of PCs that you may have to support, to have to license each of those PCs individually. You've gotta have something that's firewall compatible as well and that is completely transparent in the way it gets through firewalls, NET, proxies, etc. so that your end user does not have to configure anything. It's an extremely important consideration.