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Remote support for Africa

By Rodney Weidemann, ITWeb Contributor
Johannesburg, 04 Mar 2005

Local networking specialist Netvision believes its remote desktop support solution, NetworkStreaming, will revolutionise remote support and maintenance across the African continent.

NetworkStreaming is a US application for which Netvision has local reseller rights. It allows support representatives to gain complete control of a user`s desktop in seconds across the Internet, using a quick remote download.

"This application is unique in that the user can initiate a session with a support person via our website, using a session key to log on, provided both parties agree," says Netvision director Jonathan Atkinson.

"The solution is not only a faster option but it is secure as well. All traffic passed through the gateway is 128-bit secure socket layer (SSL) encrypted and support representative pages are also password protected."

He says the majority of corporate firewalls are designed to stop inbound traffic rather than outbound. Therefore there is seldom any problem with this type of support, since the user initiates it inside the firewall.

"It`s certainly not a case that support can just jump on to your machine uninvited, although the beauty of this application is that it does allow the support person to connect across multiple machines in order to troubleshoot issues."

This application is targeted at any company that requires remote support or has players with applications out in the field, says Atkinson. "It improves immensely on the standard telephonic support, since the problem can be seen on screen by the support representative."

Atkinson says there has been a lot of interest for the application from major players in the SA market, but his company has loftier ambitions than this.

"Ideally we would like to take this into the greater African market as remote support is a key factor in a large region like this. We have already begun looking at opportunities in other African nations."

According to Atkinson, information on the applications is available on the company`s website, www.netvision.co.za, and the organisation also offers prospective customers a 15-day free trial or the option of seeing the support desk in action through a five-minute live demo.

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