PlumChoice, a nationwide remote technical services firm headquartered in Billerica, Mass., helps troubleshoot IT problems for the home, home office, and small business customer. Rich Surace, senior vice president of operations, tells IncTechnology.com that by upgrading to an appliance-based virtual IT support technology the company is helping resolve a growing variety of problems with computers, PDAs, and other devices on a variety of platforms.
Elizabeth Wasserman: What does PlumChoice do?
Rich Surace: PlumChoice is the nationwide leader in providing trusted remote technical services for the home, home office, and small business on a 7/24/365 basis throughout the U.S. and Canada. We have comprehensive plans and service options, from simple one time service fixes to a complete protection plan that is charged monthly. We help our clients with computers, networks, cameras and CE devices, hardware and software needs. We also have multiple channels of distribution and we support a variety of channel partners, including telcos, ISPs, and others.
Wasserman: What was wrong with your IT support that you needed to upgrade?
Surace: It wasn’t what was wrong but what was missing. What was missing was being able to extend our platform to provide a broader range of tech services. We had some technical challenges that did not allow us to provide certain types of support beyond the basic Windows and Intel — or Wintel — systems. We wanted to be able to extend our support to Macs and PDAs but until about 12 months ago we only had the ability to provide services to more traditional types of machines. This is a great competitive differentiator for us.
Wasserman: So what did you do?
Surace: We upgraded to something called the Bomgar Box. It’s an appliance-based software for virtual support that allows companies to connect to remote clients and co-workers via the Internet anywhere in the world in seconds. It’s a remote tool that has features such as collaboration and extension of services to devices where traditional remote tools haven’t gone yet — such as PDAs, digital cameras, and cell phones. We have two server-based units that reside in our co-location facilities through the U.S. We’ve now incorporated it into our support enterprise. It’s one of many tools we use. The nice thing about it is the appliance resides in your building. We have control of how we deploy it and where we use it. It’s now part of our overall service delivery platform, which we call SAFELink.
Wasserman: What benefits have you realized?
Surace: We can now get access to other devices that we didn’t have access to before, such as Macs, PDAs, consumer electronic devices, such as your camera or cell phone or other mobile device. And our Partners can begin to create really unique services for the market. People use their cameras on their mobile phones all the time and they don’t necessarily know how to transfer pictures, or sync their schedule between PC and PDA. Many of them also have MP3 players in their phones. Consumers use these devices for data, pictures, e-mail, voice mail, etc. The PDA is the handheld computer of the future. When customers have a problem with their device, we now can extend remote service to those devices and platforms.
