The Hurwitz Group has defined a new IT support framework to help IT managers handle the increased business pressure placed on the ever-more important IT department.
The support infrastructure, e-support, notes that e-business, increase in the number of computing devices, and the evolution of IT to a profit centre are all factors that will stretch support departments beyond their current limits in months to come.
The Hurwitz Group defines e-support as a "new support process built around proactive service and automated return of an inoperable system to a working condition". It should ensure users of consistent, anytime, anywhere solutions to common problems via the Web, LAN or WAN.
It provides an increased number of solutions without increasing the manual support costs. These solutions can be implemented in-house, or via independent managed service providers or application service providers that deliver e-support solutions over the Internet on a subscription basis.
Commenting on the support infrastructure, Rhys Taylor, sales and marketing director for Pretoria-based technology house, Diamond Network Technologies, says: "There are enormous return on investment benefits to be gained from e-support solutions. The automatic restoration of systems to a working state without the need for staff to handle problem analysis or visit the afflicted device improves user and IT productivity. It also lowers support costs by allowing existing staff to cover the growing numbers of PCs and network appliances."
Hurwitz notes that the return on opportunity benefits are numerous, since organisations will have increased efficiency in the use of IT resources while providing more reliable and secure business operations.
At the same time, the research group says e-business makes business operations more transparent to external users, and as a result, the productivity gains seen by improving end-user system availability can be translated into a competitive weapon for service-driven industries.
"As the business world comes to rely more on its IT systems than ever before, and more people need access to corporate data and systems while on the move, the pressure on IT departments to deliver 100% service availability to the user is soaring," says Taylor.
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