Supporting the Widespread Campus: Remote Support at Ohio State University
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October 24, 2006Download mp3 | Read Transcript
Justin Brock:
Good afternoon and welcome to today's webcast, supporting the widespread campus. My name is Justin Brock, Manager of E-Commerce here at BomgarTM.
Today we have a special guest from Ohio State University. Duane Rigsby is Assistant Manager and Coordinator there at the Ohio State University South Centers. He's been there about 15 years. Is that right, Duane?
Duane Rigsby: Assistant Manager & Coordinator, Ohio State University South Centers:
Yes.
Justin Brock:
And Duane and Nathan McNeill, our VP of Product Management will be discussing the unique challenges faced by people in the education university trying to accomplish remote support across the campus.
Before we begin our presentation, if you will look at the bottom left hand side of your console. There's a place there to submit questions. If you have a question at any time during the presentation, please do not hesitate to ask. We will be answering those questions toward the end of the presentation and I'd like you to ask them while we're going just so that you don't forget them.
With that I'm going to turn things over to Duane and Nathan. Thank you.
Nathan McNeill:
Thanks, Justin. I wanted to first give a little bit of information about BomgarTM to stage things for people who may not know about us.
We were founded in 2003. We offer remote control support solutions. It'll allow a technician to gain remote control of their computer remotely in about ten seconds, even if the computer is behind a firewall, and even if the computer does not have any preinstalled software.
We have over 2,000 customers in all 50 states in about 30 countries internationally. And this represents about the third largest customer base within the remote support market. We are also exclusively focused on the support professional. This is all we do and we're committed to that.
I wanted to give you a little bit of ... a few examples of some of our education customers. We have customers ranging from large universities to small colleges, all the way down to K-12 institutions. So it really does run the gamut.
With that is just a brief word of introduction. I wanted to introduce Duane Rigsby. Again, Systems Manager at The Ohio State University South Centers. He's gonna walk through some of the challenges he faces in supporting his campus. And then also how he's using BomgarTM to offer support to that campus, to The Ohio State University. So with that, Duane if you want to do your presentation.
Duane Rigsby - Assistant Manager & Coordinator, Ohio State University South Centers:
Okay. Thank you, Nathan. I'd like to first start off - Justin told you about I've been here for 15 years with the South Centers for The Ohio State University. We opened in 1991 - started out really small campus there. Now I support roughly 55 university people, and then this previous year we added a Incubator Center for small businesses or startup businesses which can house up to 26 businesses.
And, we originally started thinking that we would only be about a third full, and but since then we have been totally surprised and that the building is completely full. So, we've had a great amount of interest in that.
But, in a long run that also sparked more support that I have to cover. So, we roughly - now I cover 26 businesses, which some of them have - are single clients and some are five and six and seven, eight people even.
But, that wasn't originally the reason why we purchased BomgarTM and its support. We started out with multiple counties that the university covers for extension. As you can see, there's - our main campus that we have in Columbus, we've got several hundred different campuses, buildings, colleges.
And our tech support is really unorganized for say as a group. Usually for each college has their own tech support and in some even some departments have their own tech support. We don't really rely on each other's expertise in some instances.
But, for the most part, we've tried to get together and say, "Hey, you know how to do this. Help me out here and there." So, we've really covered ourself in the background behind to support us.
Duane Rigsby - Assistant Manager & Coordinator, Ohio State University South Centers:
But once the university - or excuse me - extension, which is the department I work in, came about - or not came about. But when I started doing that, we cover 88 counties in Ohio. And if you'll look down at the extreme point of Ohio here, I'm just to the left where it says Pike, or if you can see that. I'm one county up at about 11:00 from that point
We have - the extension broke the state up in regions that we support. We have four different techs that cover three regions, and if you take a line and almost go north to south there, or straight up and down, they cut it in that direction. And then they also cut it at about a 45 degree angle on the right side to make the three different regions.
So you can tell that there are several people have to drive a lot of miles just to cover counties. But that's a little bit of background about who - what we cover and things like that. But in a whole, the university - or not the university - but the extension covers about 44,000 square miles that the techs have to cover for support. And that was a big issue for us, so that's where we started looking at different things.
We also support within those 88 counties, we cover 1,200 plus computers along with all the peripherals and extra devices such as scanners, printers, sliders, slide scanners and such. And also a bunch of network storage and things that we have. Not to mention all of the different networks that we have to work with because our backbone - we don't have a backbone for each county to go on.
So they're actually on the individual networks. Some counties have a DSL line, some have cable, some have wireless, some are piggybacked off of another county organization, county office, or something like that. Excuse me - and it's really hard to cover getting bandwidth back and forth to different things.
Duane Rigsby - Assistant Manager & Coordinator, Ohio State University South Centers:
So that's one of the big things that we looked at and other ways of supporting it. We wanted to be able to start looking at updating machines. We know with the way Windows and everything is covered with patches and things nowadays. You can't get to one county to the other without doing remote support anymore.
So, let's see, the - some of the hurdles that we started looking at for the reasoning why we went to remote support system was our travel budget. The cost of gas is ever going up and down and back and forth. The drive time from getting from one county to the other, if you - if we went back to that map, and you seen that one person has to almost literally go from north to south on the west side. It takes three plus hours, four hours to get from one county to the next - and especially with a small problem.
You know, our clients, our educators and stuff. If they had just a small problem say with email or something, but that's really to getting to be a major program for us that, you know, people have to have their email off and on. That - you know, that was a major thing, but to drive two, three hours plus just to fix a problem that may only take us five or ten minutes was out of the question . So a lot of times we put that off until we had either enough problems there, or our schedule would allow us to drive to that county and fix the problem.
But now with this remote support, BomgarTM, we can do that now. It's just been a huge turnaround for us in how quick we can get these problems solved.
Some of the solutions here, requirements that we looked at when we started doing - when we looked into the product was to be able to do a remote reboot of an end user's computer. And now what that consists of that we, you know, we wanted was that we didn't want somebody sitting there, or the client sitting there at their computer while maybe we had to do a restart or install some software and ended up the software do a restart.
Duane Rigsby - Assistant Manager & Coordinator, Ohio State University South Centers:
We wanted to be able to get right back to that machine after a reboot. In other previous software we looked at, you had to have the end user sit there, connect your remote software back, or turn it on and then it would come back to you and log in. But, we wanted to be able to, you know, eliminate that person because they've got other things they can do in the office and such. So that's where the reboot came to be such a great benefit to us. And one of the, you know, the real selling points for the software.
We also wanted it to be set up and ready to go, you know, right out of the box, and it was. It was a great product for that. We had to do literally no setup because it was ready.
We only have two developers in our college that can - that do large support like this that can develop remote software and such like that. And it would've taken them several hours and several days to come up with a solution for us, and we didn't want to burden them with our medium to large problem that we were starting to have, but they had tons of other issues that they had to work with as well. So that's why we went to external to try to fix - to come up with a solution.
An easy remote connection for the end user, we wanted them to be able to just, you know, go to a Web page or go to a file that we could send 'em, and click on it and really that's all they do. And that's what this came about was to easily connect to this software. You just go to a Web site, or to a Web page, you click on your name or, for instance, my name and it would almost literally walk - it walks you through the steps of installing their - the little client, and so you can do the remote support.
And the client is such a lightweight client. It's very small in size, that it installs quick, especially over different networks. It has probably on dial-up it only takes a minute or less to install. And to be able to work over dialup because we do have a few counties that do have dial-up support that we - or dial-up Internet that we still have because they can't get broadband, yet, at their location.
Duane Rigsby - Assistant Manager & Coordinator, Ohio State University South Centers:
And then, of course, a secure connection I think everybody knows, or every tech person knows that you want a secure connection when you're looking at that product for doing remote support. And then also the end user, that makes them a - makes them feel a whole lot safer when you can tell them that's it's a secure connection and such.
The - how we compared some of this was that the reboot - and it had an auto-reconnect. That is just a super way to do support on a machine was, if you had to reboot that machine, it comes back and it sends the request back to the tech. And it asks you if you want to reconnect, and the tech has to say "yes" or "no." And the all of a sudden you're connected back.
We'd - I - excuse me, I don't do a whole a lot of support for Mac users, yet, but we do have one or two that's in the building that I don't have to do a remote desktop to. I just walk down the hall, but it does, in the new release, support Mac.
And I think that's just a great benefit because I know there's a few other users out there in our state that has Mac computers. And I think that'll be the next step that we'll go with them. Otherwise we would've had to drive to those on a regular basis, but they don't - we don't have too much trouble with those right at the moment. But, I think the support would be - is a great plus.
Being able to work over dial-up was another big issue that we had to compare with. If you look at Remote PC or other products, it just wasn't comparable for dial-up and this client, it really worked over it.
Duane Rigsby - Assistant Manager & Coordinator, Ohio State University South Centers:
We've also tried to use VNC and such to make this happen, and it just wasn't quite acceptable for a tech. You would click on something and you would wait and wait and wait, and this seems to be much quicker. The flow is absolutely great on that part.
Using - what we use BomgarTM for is, a lot of the times we do one-on-one training. And when I say training, we do - I might have a user call me up and they'll say, "Duane, I need some help with an Excel file, and how do you get this formula to work correctly?" or something and we'll just say, "Yeah, let's do a session now and we'll - I'll show you how to do that."
And they might be two and a half hours away, and that's where those easy problems are solved. We don't have to drive there and show 'em, and it might be a little harder to troubleshoot over the phone when you're talking to an educator that isn't really tech savvy or such that they don't know what we're talking about when we say a different kind of formula or something. And that's been a great help to us on that on doing one-on-one things.
Some of the other stuff we do - a bulk purchase on computers. We bring 'em into the office. We set 'em up, get 'em everything pretty much ready to go. We ship 'em out to the counties. They plug 'em into their network. They should be all patched up and secure, and all that stuff.
But then we'll do a remote session to it, bring over their other files, bring over their email, set up - do - just do the final installation of the new computer. And we don't have to drive there, maybe it's only one machine or something. And that helps as well because we can also be working in the office and all of the sudden do a Bomgar session to another user, install their machine, be ready to go.
Duane Rigsby - Assistant Manager & Coordinator, Ohio State University South Centers:
Changing settings on end users' computers - we're just now going through a big email changeover, and it's been a small headache for us. When we tell that we've tried to call and talk to the end user and say, change this setting, this setting and this setting, and that doesn't always work because of the different networks, different - some people are, like I said, are on DSL. Some have cable, wireless.
All of their settings are different and we may have to change a POP server or an SMTP server or something to match their network providers. So we have to kinda almost do a one-on-one training with that just to get all their email set up and such, and then also being able to connect to multiple machines at one time.
I can connect up to another one and say, "Oh, you know, here's how - you missed this document." Or they would call me up and say, "I've lost files. Where can I find them?" and they would just be - they moved a folder accidentally or something, and you would just have to go in the machine and find it.
Again, you know, one of those easy problems that can be cured just by doing this. You don't have to drive those two and three hours just to get to their - or map a network drive that they might've disconnected accidentally or something like that.
Duane Rigsby - Assistant Manager & Coordinator, Ohio State University South Centers:
Some of our other - the savings, of course, was being able to work with end users much quicker. Those times, you know, we don't, you know, they call us up and say, "We've got this small problem here with a scanner or our piece of software is not working right." Before we had to say, "Well, I can get to you next Friday," or if it was even this week, you know, I could say I could get back to you on Thursday, and they're going, "Oh, no, you know, I have a presentation tomorrow night. I need this fixed."
So, if we couldn't talk 'em through it on the phone how to fix that, we would have to drive two and a half hours over, and all of a sudden we go, "Oh, this is what it is," and it took literally two minutes to fix. Or, you had to plug in a cable or something to make that work. And that's how easily this makes it our - part of our job that much easier.
We actually have our clients now, our educators and other people that we support actually call us up and say, "Hey, get on the BomgarTM thing and fix my problem here real quick." And that's - that makes, you know, they actually now are enjoying this because they'll actually holler at some of their other people in the office and say, "Hey, my computer's possessed," you know, the mouse is moving.
And that's the other plus. You can - the end user sees everything that you're doing and that makes them feel a whole lot more comfortable when they're doing this remote session with you. And savings on travel budget - we don't have to travel. Some of our other techs - I don't travel that much. I'm sort of the - you can call me the backup person or the phone support person of this, and also now, you know, I do a lot of BomgarTM sessions with other clients here for us. But the travel budget - some of our techs has actually cut down 20, 25% of their travel time, and some of 'em have done more than that on occasions.
You can immediately resolve these problems that are - we call easy fixes. Things that, you know, just like that finding files and such like that. And it's just been a super product for that, but doing the remote support and people calling us has been the biggest thing. And then that word obviously gets out to all of our other clients, and they call us up and say, "Hey, fix this problem."
Duane Rigsby - Assistant Manager & Coordinator, Ohio State University South Centers:
In some aspects, we end up - we're getting busier, but now we get to stay in the office a little bit more, actually educate ourself, and then also be able to fix problems at the same time. At which time it - that makes it much better, gets it back to our directors, or our bosses that we're doing a good job. And, you know, everybody's liked and everything's nice and happy at that.
And I think with that I'll give it back to Nathan real quick, and we'll go from there.
Nathan McNeill - VP of Product Management, BomgarTM:
Thank you, Duane. And, you know, it's interesting something you said a moment ago, cuz we've gotten the same feedback from a number of our clients that once the end users find out that you've got the capability to remote control their PC and just do it for them, instead of walking through it over the phone, they end up requesting it, and you get the same requests over and over again.
A lot of times the end users don't want to be kind of - they don't wanna be puppet mastered by the IT guy fixing their system. They'd rather have you do it. They just want someone to come in and help them out.
Duane Rigsby:
Exactly.
Nathan McNeill:
Interesting feedback.
Duane Rigsby:
Exactly. We find that a lot at - we're actually getting a lot of calls now from our clients saying that, "Hey, connect up to me and fix this problem right away. I don't wanna see you tomorrow. I want it fixed now."
Nathan McNeill - VP of Product Management, BomgarTM:
I wanna take the next few minutes just to walk through how the solution works. This is our support solution, and we deliver it in an appliance. We're the only appliance remote support solution on the market.
As I mentioned earlier, it does allow you to connect to any computer anywhere in the world, or anywhere in Ohio in just a few seconds. So, you don't have to drive on site, and you don't have to walk through things over the phone - real time saver.
We also include integrated file transfer and chat. You can - as Duane mentioned, you can reboot and then automatically reconnect which requires zero user intervention. So once you have control of the PC, the user does not have to reinitiate the session after a reboot.
So, the for instance is that if you're installing software or, you know, doing whatever other activity where you're just watching a progress bar, you can - or reviewing the system, you can basically let the user go about their business while you fix their PC. And then once you've completed fixing their PC, it'll leave them with a dialogue box explaining, you know, what happened and that the rep is off.
We also include session transfer and share so that if you have multiple reps, you can transfer sessions to different reps or have multiple reps collaborate over a single session, both viewing the screen.
You can also handle multiple sessions easily. We have a tabbed interface, which you'll see in a second, so you can quickly tab between multiple sessions. And the deployment for our product - it's - you need Ethernet and power and that's basically it.
Nathan McNeill - VP of Product Management, BomgarTM:
We usually - we tell our customers to take the BomgarTM pizza box challenge, which is to, you know, when you get the appliance box, order a pizza. By the time the pizza gets there, you should have the appliance installed and up and running. It really is that simple.
This is how it works. It's all outbound connections on standard Web ports 443 and 80. And so it does not require any firewall configuration either for the rep, or for the customer.
When you're installing the appliance, you need to make it available on the Internet via ports 443 and 80, but beyond that point there's zero configuration. So your customer, all they do is go to Web site, click on link and give you control. And the rep, likewise, can log in from any location, whether he's at home or in the office.
And you can also control a Mac or a PC with our latest 9.1 release, so it really does allow you to control your entire user base. The way it works, the support rep would monitor the queue waiting for incoming connections. And these support sessions can come in.
There's three different ways to initiate the session. One would be for the user, as you'll see at the top, to click on a display name of the rep. The second option would be for the user to enter a session key, which the rep would supply - the unique session key. And the third option is for the customer to basically fill out a support request form, which would then be entered into the rep's queue.
And that can be associated with a particular team of reps. So, if you have a team that is responsible for monitoring, or for supporting a different group of support requests, you can route those requests to that team.
Nathan McNeill - VP of Product Management, BomgarTM:
So, the user always has to grant explicit control to the rep. It's never that the rep is taking control of the user's PC. The user's always granting it. This has multiple security benefits, so from a security standpoint it means that the user is always in control. They also have overriding mouse control. They can always choose to end the session at any time, and then once the session is over, the client uninstalls and the user's PC is exactly the same as it was before.
It also has benefits for the rep and for the support organization in that you do not have to maintain a client-based remote control software infrastructure across your systems. You don't have to do a deployment, and you don't have to maintain it.
So, the rep gains remote control of the PC. This, again, is - the analogy is, you know, it's a lot easier to drive than to tell someone how to drive. Same way with PC support. The rep gets in the cockpit, is able to pilot things through and then insure at the end of the session that things actually were resolved. The issue actually was fixed, and he's not relying on what the user tells him about what the PC looks like.
And then once the session is over, the user would either click the Uninstall or the Stop Session button, or the rep can end the session. And then the user is automatically directed to a feedback form. This is customizable so the administrator can configure whether or not they want the feedback form to show up. They can also customize what the feedback form includes, so you can have up to ten questions and then decide what type of questions you'd like, whether you want radio buttons or check boxes or comment fields.
Some of the benefits that BomgarTM offers, you can connect easily to your customer. Again, it's usually about a ten second process from the point where they have no software they load on their PC, you've never seen the PC before to the point where you're remote controlling that customer's computer.
This increases the support rep's productivity and consequently, usually their satisfaction with their work as well. It's a little less frustrating if they can do the work themselves versus walk the PC user through it.
Nathan McNeill - VP of Product Management, BomgarTM:
It increases first call resolutions. It decreases call handling times. Again, travel is reduced. You no longer have those long tech support phone calls. And then with our appliance model, you can own and host the solution yourself without a lot of hassle, without maintaining a lot of different software components.
One peripheral benefit also is that, as I mentioned earlier, you can ensure that an issue is resolved - should reduce repeat incidents. You don't have the user calling back in and saying, "No, actually is was not fixed." The support rep can confirm the issue was resolved before getting off the call.
So, there's also a quote from Mike Gerst with Texas A&M University. We actually did a Webinar with him a couple of weeks ago that you can view on our site if you'd like. "The bottom line is that with BomgarTM, it allows you to do more with less." A lot of times, especially colleges and universities, you may be working with a very limited support staff. And with BomgarTM it allows you support even a widely distributed user base without having a large or widely distributed support staff.
Now this I wanted to see if anyone had any questions, either for me or for Duane.
Justin Brock, Moderator:
Thank you both Duane and Nathan. I'm going to be - begin taking some audience questions. If you do have any, now would be the time to ask them.
Justin Brock, Moderator:
Q: Some of you already have asked them, so I'll begin with this one from an attendee. "Is there a limit on multiple sessions a support rep can handle at one time?" And maybe Duane, you can speak from your experience, and Nathan, if you wanna talk a little bit to the technology.
Duane Rigsby - Assistant Manager & Coordinator, Ohio State University South Centers:
A: I guess I'll start with that. In - yes and no. There is a limit because you can get very - not very confused, but you can get confused pretty quickly if you have four or five sessions open. And I've also found that, you know, depending on what kind of a machine that you're actually on, the tech is doing, it can be really - it can drag the machine down after you get about four connections going simultaneously.
Nathan McNeill - VP of Product Management, Bomgar
A: Yeah, it is going to depend on the resources available to it, which includes bandwidth as well as the kind of PC the rep is using. So is the kind of PC that the customer is using. So, it does vary. We have not put an artificial cap on the number of sessions you can handle simultaneously.
There is a kind of a logical limit. I think - the input we get from our customers is that usually around six it becomes counterproductive to add additional sessions.
Q: "Can you integrate the solution with other help desk software?" Maybe, Nathan, you can speak to that.
Nathan McNeill - VP of Product Management, Bomgar
A: Yeah. We have included with the latest release an API that allows you to - it allows you to read access to the database. And there's also some front end integration components as well, so it would allow you to take session data and then associate that with a particular ticket like in a help desk system or a knowledge base application.
So, it would allow you to integrate the support sessions from BomgarTM into your existing ticket tracking system like Remedy, or CA - or excuse me, HP OpenView Service Desk, or something - some other application like that.
We can get you more information on that. Maybe, Justin, if you could take a note of who asked and we may be able to forward on some more information about that.
Q: How have you overcome customer concerns about security when you're connecting with them?
Duane Rigsby - Assistant Manager & Coordinator, Ohio State University South Centers:
A: I think some of the concerns is, you know, usually they're like, "How are you doing this, you know, remotely and such?" We keep telling 'em that, you know, you have to, like Nathan said, that you have to say, "Yes, grant me full control."
You can also, there's an option in there that says, no, you're not going to grant the tech full control. You can only grant 'em view access, and - or I think that's the words it says, and that sometimes makes 'em a lot better. They're saying, "Oh, you know, no, you're not having full access to my machine," but that's usually what we tell 'em. And we also tell 'em down in their bottom right corner by your clock, you can disconnect us at any time if you feel that we're in the wrong area that you - we don't want, you know, they don't want us looking at.
But usually they trust the techs pretty well, and - but they like that question up there: Yes, I'm gonna grant the tech full support. Or, a lot of times, you know, when they call in and talk to me, I'll tell 'em, you know, "No, you don't have to grant me full support. What I'm gonna do is, I just need to see your screen so I can see what you're doing."
And then I'll tell - I'll let them fix the problem, but I'll tell 'em, you know, what we need to do, and let them be the control and such. And that makes them feel a lot better, too.
Q: Do you find that walking them through the issues that way lessens the number of repeat incidents with the same customer?
Duane Rigsby - Assistant Manager & Coordinator, Ohio State University South Centers:
A: Yes. In most cases, yes. They do. I find that a lot of times after you do that once, or sometimes I've had the same question occur twice. But after that, they're like, "Oh, yeah," you know, and, you know, when I do see 'em in person they're like - they're glad that they're, I don't know, I'm trying to think of a word - not impressed, but they're glad that I'm talking to them about how to fix it rather than I just go fix it and say okay, it's fixed.
They wanna know what you did and things, so they don't have to call you back because a lot of times they say, "Well, you know, you're busy with other things. If this is a small problem I can fix it, but tell me how." And I let them do it so that that gets them a little better knowledge as well.
Justin Brock:
So, there may be the peripheral benefit of training the people you're supporting.
Duane Rigsby - Assistant Manager & Coordinator, Ohio State University South Centers:
Exactly, yeah. Yeah, it's - we're training them in the background whether they realize it or not.
Nathan McNeill - VP of Product Management, Bomgar:
Justin, I did want to make a note regarding the question about security, or about the perceived security for the end user, cuz again, these are kind of two distinct issues. One is the actual security of the application, which we would talk about how it's within an encrypted tunnel through 256-bit SSL encryption, how it's - all the data is routed through your appliance. So should locally your system - your data center as well as the fact that we had the application audited by Symantec Corporation and things like that.
The flip side of that is perceived security, which is basically what the customer perceives as, you know, how secure they are using the application without understanding all the ins and outs of how the application functions.
And on that front, Duane mentioned a few of these. It starts with the fact that the customer initiates the session. The next step is that the permission level of the rep - the customer would grant Web or permissions the rep has, and also administratively the administrator can limit or expand the rep's permission level so that he may be able to perform some functions using the tool that - but not others.
We also have the Stop Session button on the customer client so that the customer can end the session at any point. And then the customer also has overriding mouse control. So they always feel in control of the session even though the rep may be moving the mouse. As soon as the customer moves the mouse, it takes back control.
And so - and one thing we found, you know, initially a lot - some of our clients may ask about whether the customers will be willing to adopt it. Usually after the solution has been rolled out, the response is totally different like we were talking about earlier. It's - the customers are asking for it. They're actively requesting you to use the tool.
Nathan McNeill - VP of Product Management, Bomgar:
As long as they feel in control of what happens during the session, they're not afraid to let you in. One thing as well is that if you're looking at the security of the application, usually you're dealing with a trusted party, so the customer is - or client, or user - is giving control to a rep.
The alternative would be for the rep to come on site, and for them to take their system. So either way - it's either you're giving control through the Net where you don't have to wait four hours for them to show up. Or you're giving control to rep when he comes on site. So, again usually that trust relationship is there, and it's not really much of an issue to the customer.
Justin Brock, Moderator:
So the - yeah, I think you're right. It is helpful to think there's a level of product security, but there's also the perceived security. If - there was a question specifically about security, and I think you answered most of it there.
But just for those that are in the audience, if you want to go to Bomgar.com and then type in Symantec.htm after the .com, there's - you'll be able to download Symantec's assessment of our appliance. And that'll give you a little bit more detailed information.
On to the next question, there are a few questions that I'm kinda gonna summarize about the customizability, if that's a word, of the application. Customizing may be the public page from which people request support, customizing other aspects of the product. I know there's the chat survey - I mean, the survey at the end.
Justin Brock, Moderator:
Q: Nathan, would mind talking about the ways you can customize the product. And Duane, if you've - if you've actually done that, maybe you could speak to that as well.
Nathan McNeill - VP of Product Management, Bomgar:
Duane, did you wanna walk through any customizations you've done first, or - ?
Duane Rigsby - Assistant Manager & Coordinator, Ohio State University South Centers:
A: Sure. That'll be fine, yeah. We have customized it a little bit that the default page that the end users would see is directed straight off the appliance, and what we've done is we've just written a little script that would actually take the users or the - not the users, excuse me, the techs that are online or signed in, and put them on our default help page so merely we just tell 'em to go to our Web page at the bottom of it.
You will see, if our name is there, we're signed in and all they have to do is click there. So, yes, it - we've taken that and actually made it - we just integrate it right into our current help page. And that makes it really nice for 'em so we can always, you know, pound into their head, only one page that they have to go to. And that's the big modification that we've done.
Nathan McNeill - VP of Product Management, Bomgar:
A: I'm gonna walk through some of the new customization features as of September 29th with our latest release, and then go back - excuse me, we go back one second. Okay, this page is the page where the user would request support, and this page can be completely customized. Not only can you choose which of the three initiation options you'll want to use, you can also make the look and feel of the page exactly the same as your own Web site.
Nathan McNeill - VP of Product Management, Bomgar:
You have access to the HTML. The only component that is not customized is a little logo at the bottom saying, "Powered by BomgarTM." Other than that, it can look exactly like your home page.
In addition to that, this little application is the customer client. You can customize the logo that appears within this client, as well as some of the initial messages that come up in dialogue boxes in order to grant the rep control. So, you have controlled both of which dialogue boxes come up, and also the text within those boxes, as well as some of the greeting text within this little application when it first pops up.
Let's see, I mentioned a little bit earlier that you can customize the feedback form at the end, both with the number of questions and then the type of questions, and then which questions you want to ask.
Some of the other customizations, I think I mentioned the API earlier where you can build - you can pull the data from the appliance, and then build customized reports. So you just have access at that point to the data.
We also include integration with LDAP, Lightweight Directory Access Protocol, so you can create groups right from Active Directory, or pull users from Active Directory. So you don't have to create the users all locally within the appliance.
Nathan McNeill - VP of Product Management, Bomgar:
So, it really does allow you right from the beginning to the end to communicate both the company messages you want to get across, as well as getting your logo, or your brand, in front of the customer.
Justin Brock, Moderator:
Thank you both, Nathan and Duane. This is the last question that we'll have time for. If you did ask a question - just before I ask this one - if you're in the audience and you did submit a question, we will do our best to answer those via email after the webcast is over.
And there's also quite a bit of information on our site, and there's also other ways to contact us there, too. But, we will endeavor to answer these via email.
Q: The last question: "How is BomgarTM licensed? Is it by number of users, or could you elaborate on that?"
Nathan McNeill - VP of Product Management, Bomgar:
Sure, BomgarTM is licensed per concurrent user, and this is a big deal because most of our competition licenses per seat. So it's usually per name or per named user per rep, whereas we license per concurrently logged-in rep.
Nathan McNeill - VP of Product Management, Bomgar:
So, for instance, you might have 10,000 PCs that you're supporting, but only four reps that you use to support those PCs, and of those only three would be logged in at any given time. At that point you would need three licenses, or just the number of concurrent users. And then you can create additional accounts so that the fourth user could get in as well.
So, that's the licensing model. It is $1,995.00 for the appliance, our 200 model appliance. So, $1,995.00 and then $1,695.00 per concurrent license of BomgarTM.
Justin Brock, Moderator:
Thank you. That's the end of today's webcast. I'd like to thank everyone once again for attending. Thank you for your questions. These are always better when the audience is participating and grilling us.
And Duane, we'd especially like to thank you for helping us out today and thank you for using our product. We appreciate you being a customer.
Duane Rigsby - Assistant Manager & Coordinator, Ohio State University South Centers:
Thank you very much. It's been a pleasure using the remote support. It's greatly helped out our time situation.
Justin Brock, Moderator:
Wonderful. Well, again, I appreciate it. If you would like to stay in tune for future Web casts, please don't hesitate to go to bomgar.com. We do try to put on the home page there, alerts when the next Web cast is coming up. So, be sure to visit bomgar.com in a few weeks to see when the next one is coming. And with that I'll say cheers.