Remote Support for the Systems Integrator

Joel Bomgar, Founder & CEO:
So really, it put us in a bind of we can't deploy a software client. Even if we could it wouldn't be any use because, you know, obviously we tried to have a VPN infrastructure to the degree we could but with that kind of a customer base and constantly signing on new customers you just can't - you know, it's always hit or miss as to whether you have a VPN to the customer, whether you have the right passwords for that VPN, whether you have the right certificates in place and all of that to actually make it work. So, the solutions that were on the market that were not LAN-based were all ASP solutions. These were clientless remote control technology that worked through firewalls. So, technically it would fit the business requirements but it was cost prohibitive with monthly fees ranging from $300 to $400 per month per support rep which, when you looked at a team of ten engineers, you'd be talking about set up fees in the thousands of dollars as well as monthly fees ranging $3 - 4,000 per month. And, even though we knew this incident-based remote control technology could revolutionize the way we do business, obviously backing $3 - 4,000 a month out of the bottom line just to pay for the technology really didn't make any sense.

Also, the solutions already on the market lacked the ability to log in and log out of a remote machine and do a reboot/reconnect which, when you're doing troubleshooting, you're obviously - sometimes you need to log in as an administrator, switch user profiles, or even reboot the remote system. Well, when you're doing support of say a lawyer's desktop computer and he's billing $400.00 an hour, he is not going to sit there during the entire tech support session to get you logged back in every time your remote support technology gets disconnected. So, we had to have a solution that enabled us to stay connected or aromatically get connected after a reboot or after a log in/log out without any intervention from the end user. And, there was nothing, and still is nothing, on the market that would enable us to do that other than the features and functionality we ended up building into our own product.