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August 9, 1999

Help Is On The Way

Vendors are offering new products and services to address the growing demands on IT help desks

By Aaron Ricadela

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verburdened IT help desks may get relief from some of their most mundane duties. The need to support broken applications, faulty hardware, and user errors has too often forced technical staff into the unglamorous and cost-inflating role of on-site repair people. A handful of vendors are about to launch products and programs designed to let IT managers pay less attention to routine hassles-and more to their customers and businesses.

Startup Motive Communications Inc. in Austin, Texas, this week will launch its latest diagnostic and support software, a "self-service" package called Motive Solo that lets PC users do their own troubleshooting over the Web. The system includes a knowledge base that displays fixes to common problems, based on the user's PC configuration. By deploying Motive Solo, which starts at $100,000 for 1,000 users, internal help desks can avoid up to 30% of "simple, repeatable" calls from users, says Mike Maples, Motive's VP of marketing.

Later this month, Dell Computer plans to include Motive Duet, an existing product that lets support personnel diagnose and deliver repairs to users' systems over the Internet, with Dell's line of PowerEdge servers, say sources familiar with the companies' plans. Compaq has also licensed Duet for inclusion in future systems.

PeopleSoft began testing Duet with 22 of its customers in May, and plans a rollout next month, says Gladys Barnes, PeopleSoft's director of worldwide support services. By using Duet, PeopleSoft's support staff can push repair files electronically to users and share problem histories with PeopleSoft's Vantive application if the question needs to be escalated to the call center.

Motive competitor Tioga Systems Inc., gearing up for growth and an initial public offering, last week named Radha Basu as its president and CEO. Basu, previously general manager of Hewlett-Packard's E-Business software unit, says help-desk assistance will grow in strategic value as companies begin deploying these services beyond intranets. "Taking your internal help desk out over the extranet to your customers is when internal IT becomes a real force in attracting and retaining customers," Basu says.

Help-desk software has been available for years from a variety of vendors, including Computer Associates, HP, IBM/Tivoli, and Remedy.Intel sells its LANDesk Management Suite, which helps IT administrators monitor and configure PCs and diagnose problems remotely. ServiceWare and Primus also sell knowledge bases and other help- desk tools similar to Motive.

Despite the plethora of products, companies-particularly small and midsize businesses-still struggle with building and maintaining help desks that can keep up with the needs of their internal users and external customers. Also, help desks aren't cheap, even though they promise to reduce costs associated with managing desktop hardware and software.

This week, USWeb founder and former Price Waterhouse IS director Sheldon Laube will launch CenterBeam Inc., a startup that will serve as a "virtual network manager," help desk, and hardware supplier to companies with 10 to 100 employees. CenterBeam will sell and support PCs and printers, servers, wireless LANs, and Microsoft applications, which it will manage over high-speed DSL lines. In addition, the company plans 24-hour technical support. Pricing will start at about $165 per user each month. "You can do all of this yourself, but why would you want to?" asks Laube.

CenterBeam will begin testing with five undisclosed customers this month. Its services will be available in San Francisco, San Diego, and Sacramento, Calif., this fall, and will expand nationally next year. CenterBeam has raised $20 million in seed money from Microsoft, USWeb/CKS, and three venture-capital firms.

The IT staff of CIC Associates, a $60 million general construction contractor in Oakland, Calif., has heard CenterBeam's pitch. "When a company like CenterBeam says 'we'll have a team of experts,' the concept is exceptionally attractive," says CIC president Marty Wilson. "A lot of people say it's one-stop shopping. What I want is expertise."

New products are also on the way from traditional help-desk vendors. Altiris Inc. this week is launching Altiris eXpress, which automates such labor-intensive functions as deploying new software or configuring PC systems.

Remedy, meanwhile, wants to help manage the entire life cycle of IT assets. Next quarter, it will introduce two products: Asset Management 4.0, software that manages physical assets and financial information, including details such as product-service costs, maintenance contract management, and software leases; and Change Management 4.0, which handles requests for change management, impact and risk assessment for organizational change, and planning and scheduling tasks.

With additional reporting by Beth Davis and Jeff Sweat

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