Here’s a look at 10 additional technologies circulating through the industry spin cycle.

By Network World Staff
Network World, 09/11/00

IT ghostbusters

Got a computer problem? Who you gonna call? Sometimes users may feel like they need to call the "Ghostbusters," but usually they ask the person in the adjacent cube, then if unsuccessful, call the IT help desk.

That call can be an expensive proposition for the IT department, with costs ranging from $50 to $100, considering equipment, downtime and salary, industry watchers say. Enter Web support, in the form of infomediaries, which act as Yahoo-like directories for support information; service sites that offer some type of automated diagnosis and possible solution; and human-interaction sites through which users can talk to someone via chat or over the phone, says Tony Adams, a senior analyst with Dataquest, a San Jose unit of Gartner Group.

MyHelpDesk.com, with its corporate support site FirstHelp.com, is an example of an infomediary. Editors scour the Web for helpful information they can then direct toward users, says Eric Bulock, vice president of content of MyHelpDesk.com. FirstHelp.com service costs $30 per seat, per year, says the Norwood, Mass., firm.

Expertcity.com, a marketplace and service site, contracts with tech-savvy people around the globe to participate in support auctions, says Omid Rahmat, director of strategic development at the Santa Barbara, Calif., company. Users enter their questions, and support people bid to answer. By downloading a screen-scraping plug-in, users can give the tech support person access to their computers. The average cost is $8 to $12 per incident, Rahmat says.

EPeople.com, formerly NoWonder (one of Network World's 10 start-ups to watch in 2000), also provides an online support marketplace. "Corporations can run their help desks through our site, while providers can get tools to service the customer," says Anthony Lye, CEO of ePeople, in Mountain View, Calif. The company provides a consolidated bill for all services used.

Online help does not spell the end of traditional help desks. However, IT staffs can use all three types of online services to weed out simplistic and repetitive help desk calls, saving costs and human wear and tear.

- Jason Meserve

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