Chairman and CEO Michael Dell yesterday opened Dell Computer's first user and partner conference with a prediction that online sales would represent only a small part of a business' Internet potential.
Before 1,200 attendees at DirectConnect in Austin, Texas, Dell urged businesses to not only employ the Internet for electronic commerce but to employ it for online support and for automating all its internal processes and interactions with customers.
Michael Dell showed off an application of Internet technology that lets the company provide attended and unattended support online. With a program, which Dell dubs Open Manage Resolution Assistant, users can seek online help for problems with their PowerEdge servers and eventually their desktops. After granting permission for Dell Computer to analyze and diagnose their computers remotely, the customer can run a series of routines that will discover and solve problems if it can. Dell estimates that over 80% of problems can be resolved without dispatching service personnel.
If problems can not be self-healed, the customer will contact Dell and allow Dell to solve the problem online for them. This software at present works in attended fashion, but in the future the software will be able to detect possible problems and fix them without the user's knowledge or intervention.
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