Bosch Security Systems announced earlier this week that they have made several upgrades to their CCTV technical support center in Lancaster, Penn. On

Bosch Security Systems announced earlier this week that they have made several upgrades to their CCTV remote technical support center in Lancaster, Penn.

One of the biggest upgrades that the company made to the center was to add a team dedicated especially to solving issues related to customers with IP video surveillance products. Essentially, according to Bosch Technical Manager Don Boling, they have created "two CCTV teams," one that handles analog applications and one that handles IP.

"This structure is helping the company develop deeper expertise within each product groups’ remote technical support team," Boling said a in a prepared statement.

In addition, the center itself has been restructured to feature an open seating plan and centralized equipment racks to help encourage cooperation and sharing of information among the staff.

Source: ipsecuritywatch.com/web/online/IPSW-News/Bosch-upgrades-technical-support-center/512$14716

GlobalLogic Speeds Software Time to Market with Open Source Application Framework

VIENNA, Va., April 16 - GlobalLogic, Inc., the leader in global product development, has introduced an open source framework, Velocity Objects, that can shorten a product's time to market by as much as 30 percent. Velocity Objects, based on the company's award-winning GlobalLogic Velocity(TM) Method and Platform for distributed agile software development (, combines J2EE components with best practices so that GlobalLogic's engineers can bring client products to market even faster.

"There is no need to reinvent the wheel each time a software product is developed," said Peter Harrison, CEO of GlobalLogic. "There are many components that are common across products, and code can be re-used. GlobalLogic has spent the last six years assembling a library of reusable components and frameworks that can accelerate the development of the next generation of software products and services."

Velocity Objects provides a sound architecture, framework and building blocks for developing high quality products swiftly. It ensures quality by integrating best-of-breed open source technologies and code components developed by GlobalLogic and its partners, which have already been used successfully in other commercial products. The offering speeds development by making components reusable and eliminating the need to write infrastructure code or research the hundreds of available frameworks to find the right one for a given product.

"We needed a cutting-edge technological solution for meeting our aggressive automation needs. The solution needs to scale linearly and at the same time be extensible enough to cater to future requirements," explained Ashish Sharma, Manager Technology at iYogi, a VC-backed company in the technical support industry. "GlobalLogic's Velocity Objects helped iYogi craft a product by assembling the 'best-of-breed' components available in the open source world. Sound design principles, along with reusable frameworks and components, helped us reduce the time to market. Additionally, the flexible architecture served well to seamlessly incorporate our growing demands."

GlobalLogic Velocity is employed across a growing number of the company's 140 technology client software product development initiatives Objects is particularly applicable to the company's newly announced Version 1.0 service offering, which helps both entrepreneurs and established technology companies rapidly launch new products and enter new markets without the need for an engineering team Velocity Objects is already helping these clients accelerate quality products to market.



source : http://news.thomasnet.com/fullstory/543200

Digital Support Technology Releases New Computer Support Automation Utility

Menlo Park, CA May 2, 2008 -- Digital Support Technology, Inc. a pioneer in automated computer support over the Internet, announced the release of PC Fixer, a proprietary computer technical support automation utility today.

With an innovative Reverse Search Engine and a comprehensive knowledgebase of support procedures, Digital Support Technology has the ambition to empower individual computer user to diagnose and fix problems on a computer. By downloading and installing PC Fixer, a computer user connects the computer to the Reverse Search Engine, which not only detects problems on the computer but also explains the problems to the computer user. After going through details of the computer problems, the computer user may decide which problems to be fixed by PC Fixer. At present, Digital Support Technology fixes the majority of computer problems for free and charges a nominal fee for some specific fixes.

Since the beta release of the automation utility, thousands of computer users have tried the simple, secure, fast and easy-to-use tool and provided enthusiastic feedback. One user of the tool acclaims, "Great job in fixing my problem. I only wish I had discovered your service sooner, I could have saved myself a lot of time and frustration. Kudos to you!"

Although the online computer support landscape is already crowded with established players like Geek Squad and Firedogs, and new comers like iYogi and Support.com, Digital Support Technology intends to differentiate itself as the most innovative and the most cost-effective online technical solution provider for millions of computer users. In addition, the company commits itself to protecting privacy and security of computer users and builds its software on the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES).

source : http://www.prweb.com/releases/2008/05/prweb908264.htm

Software Helps Companies Virtualize IT Staff with remote technical support

The only provider of appliance-based remote technical support software, today announced the release of Bomgar 10.1. The newest version of this industry leading product includes features designed to help organizations easily virtualize the people involved in IT support, enabling them to be more efficient and effective. Help desk virtualization allows support staff to remotely control and troubleshoot end user devices quickly and accurately, anywhere in the world.

Advancements in mobile technology have made telecommuting a viable option for most enterprise employees elevating such workplace flexibility as a key to recruiting quality employees. Recent changes in the global economy including rising gas prices, and the mounting costs associated with travel, are further reinforcing the attractiveness of telecommuting. For IT managers this workplace trend requires a centralized support platform that allows staff to manage issues anywhere employees or offices reside. Additionally, IT managers want to extend this new flexibility not only to enterprise employees but also to the help desk staff.

“Enterprises are already deploying virtualization in their server environments to reduce costs. Since employing IT staff is often more expensive than buying servers, it only makes sense to invest in technologies that increase the effectiveness of these highly skilled employees,” said Joel Bomgar, CEO and founder, Bomgar Corporation. “With the release of 10.1, we are giving enterprises the tools they need to effectively virtualize IT staff. The result is higher productivity, lower costs to the customer, and happier employees.”

The new version of Bomgar’s remote technical support platform helps enterprises maintain a delicate balance of keeping both users and help desk staff productive and content. With Bomgar’s support platform, IT organizations no longer have to travel onsite for routine maintenance or computing issues. Bomgar 10.1 allows IT to “virtualize” staff resources so that a representative can instantly and remotely support resolve users’ technical issues regardless of operating system or geographic location. Additionally, it allows the help desk staff to “break the chains” that tie them to the office by enabling them to provide effective troubleshooting and routine maintenance from home or on the road.

Key features include:

• Software Development Kit (SDK) for Faster Deployment of Virtualized Support: With Bomgar 10.1, the company is introducing a SDK that enables easy integration of Bomgar’s remote technical support software with existing help desk solutions. It includes instructions, methods and pre-configured pieces of code for creating customizable applications that leverage Bomgar’s software for back end solutions, such as trouble ticket systems or knowledge base software. The SDK allows Bomgar’s customers to cut down time spent integrating Bomgar with other systems by nearly 75 percent, enabling them to be up and running with a complete support application in days versus weeks.
• Macintosh Client for Support Reps to Provide the Greater Flexibility: Bomgar 10.1 includes capabilities that allow support reps to provide assistance from a Macintosh platform. The addition of this feature expands Bomgar’s IT rep platform support to all major computing operating systems.
• Administrative Dashboard to Manage Resources and Speed Time to Resolution: Bomgar has added an administrative dashboard to its 10.1 product that provides IT directors with visibility into the entire support organization, regardless of where the IT support reps are logged in from. The dashboard gives IT managers a direct view into what each rep is working on as well as what his or her workload looks like. The manager can move sessions from one representative to another to evenly distribute the call load. This helps the reps provide faster, more customized support to each end user.

"IT organizations are in a difficult position. Calls for them to do 'more with less' have become louder as fears of an economic slowdown or a recession have grown louder,” said Matt Healey, research manager, software and hardware support services program, IDC. "In this environment, it is important for IT departments to invest in tools that can improve the productivity of the support staff. I believe that the new generation of 'clientless' remote technical support tools can provide the productivity improvements that IT departments are looking for by reducing on-site visits and reducing the time required to support end users."

Source: businesswire.com/portal/site/google/?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20080624005323&newsLang=en

Market undergos huge pressure due to lack of technical support

The breach of important technical support invited more spec selling, which put the market under a lot of pressure throughout the week. After some damage was done on the daily chart over the last couple of months, the market was trying to hang on to a major uptrend line on the weekly chart, which ran through about 66.50 cents this week, but to no avail. The market clearly broke through this line of defense, which triggered a lot of spec selling that forced the market down to a low of 63.10 cents before rebounding slightly.

Speculators were clearly the driving force behind this selloff and there was again a lot of talk about the potential impact the CFTC investigation might have on spec long positions. Some prominent market commentators stated that a regulatory backlash against hedge funds could lead many of them to exit positions. However, we do not necessarily share this pessimism, because in the case of cotton these specs do not have that much of a long position left to liquidate.

According to the latest CFTC "Commitment of Traders" report, large speculators held just 45'000 contracts of outright longs, down from almost 99'000 contracts at the end of February.

Meanwhile, large outright spec shorts increased their position to almost 27'000 contracts, up by over 9'000 contracts in the week of May 20 - 27 alone and up by over 21'000 contracts since the end of February.

Source: http://www.fibre2fashion.com/news/company-news/plexuscotton/newsdetails.aspx?news_id=57691

London School of Economics uses web-based remote support tool to improve helpdesk service

LogMeIn Rescue is a web-based remote technical support tool that enables a technician to easily connect to a remote Mac or smartphone often in fewer than 60 seconds, without pre-installing software. Rescue enables IT technicians to –remotely diagnose system issues, manage multiple simultaneous support sessions and resolve end-user issues, regardless of organizational size.

Using LogMeIn Rescue, LSE’s IT support teams are able to remotely diagnose and resolve technical issues on PCs, Macs and smartphones across campus and support staff offsite, ensuring prompt and effective support for IT incidents.

“After an extensive evaluation, LogMeIn Rescue was adopted at the start of the academic year as a key tool for delivering helpdesk services,”

said Adam Gale, IT Services senior support officer at LSE. “Rescue has been used for remotely diagnosing and resolving remote technical support issues for the LSE user-base and the tool has been easy to use -- providing all the necessary functions for the support teams to deliver first-class remote IT support.”

Rescue provides technicians with powerful but easy-to-use functionality including diagnostics of hardware and software images, as well as critical system information, file transfer and text-based end-user chat.

“The previous remote technical support tool employed by IT Services suffered from screen-freeze issues -- which depicted inaccurate screen information,” said Gale. “We believe Rescue resolved this and proved reliable and predictable, giving our IT support staff complete confidence when tackling support incidents.”
From a service delivery perspective, IT staff have been able to provide a more responsive and effective service when handling support calls.

Rescue has on occasion eliminated the need for IT staff to pay a desk-side visit to their users or for LSE staff and students to go to IT Services for assistance. “Instead we can remotely access a computer, deal with and resolve a complex issue which has been far more effective than trying to do the same over phone or email,” added Gale.

LSE IT Services currently supports a large number of staff and students in halls of residences and away from the school. Although not a distributed campus, the pilots have shown IT staff can support users no matter where they happen to be located. “Computer users at LSE have commented they felt reassured knowing an engineer is just a mouse click away,” continued Gale. “We had a particular user in France and my team was able to deliver remote technical support and dialogue all within the application.”

IT Services at LSE comprises several IT support teams, which provide IT helpdesk services to all academic and administrative staff, and research and taught-students. LSE has an IT-estate of approximately 1,700 staff and approximately 1,000 student on campus and halls of residences as well as a number of Linux, Mac and smartphone users. IT Services also supports more than 80 networked applications for the teaching, research and business functions of the school.

“The London School of Economics and Political Science is a world class centre for its concentration of teaching and research across the full range of the social, political and economic sciences and we are proud to be part of delivering the IT support solution to this iconic learning institution,” said Erik Driehuis, VP of sales, Europe, LogMeIn, Inc. “We believe LogMeIn Rescue has made it possible to more quickly, easily and cost effectively diagnose and repair hard to reach computers and the association with LSE continues that work."

source : publictechnology.net/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=16204