Remote Support for the Systems Integrator

Joel Bomgar, Founder & CEO:
BCI as a company was founded in 1993. They are a systems integrator and VAR. They do everything from network cabling, phone systems, systems integration, PC break fix, you name it for businesses and consumers as well as the government sector. They have over 100 employees. I was, during my time at BCI, those four years, I was one of about ten senior systems engineers that were doing the on site - or remote systems integration type work. They did work, again, across sectors and everything. The challenge that we faced at BCI, and again, this is the challenge that we as a systems integrator and VAR - the challenge we faced that led to the search for technology to solve this problem, and again, the inability to find that solution was what led us to develop the technology and develop Bomgar Corporation to develop that technology.

BCI is a company - the first need, there was really three primary needs. One, the need to provided instant support for our customers. We had probably about 500 active customers spread throughout the state of Mississippi in all 82 counties, and essentially because we were prior to implementing Remote Support technology, we were doing everything pretty much on site. It lead a lot of times to a situation where you had to have multiple projects in the same geographic area in order to send an engineer on site. And, maybe three little problems that none individually warrant an on site visit but, together, we'd send somebody out to one of the various parts of Mississippi.

But, of course, the customer doesn't like the standard answer of, "Maybe we can slide that in some time next Thursday." You know they have a problem now, it's inhibiting their ability to do their job, and they want a solution now regardless of where in the state they live. So, that was one of our first challenges is we have to be able to provide support and systems integration, systems engineering, to our customer base instantly. It does not work to wait until, you know, we've accrued a queue of issues in one specific area. The second was a need to cut mileage expense and engineer downtime. Mileage is - obviously when your engineers are spending 1/3 to 1/2 of their day on the road becomes incredibly expensive. And, with recent gas prices and all of those things, any type of travel becomes very expensive.