Flinders University, a well-established institution in Adelaide, South Australia, was facing challenges with its IT support system. The university's multiple IT departments were using a variety of remote support solutions, depending on the type of device or operating system the user had. This required the support technicians to be familiar with all these tools and to ask users several questions to determine which remote support tool to use to solve the problem. The technical support teams also operated in a siloed fashion, resulting in inefficiencies and slower response times to users. Additionally, there was no tracking or reporting for remote support activities. The university needed a solution that would consolidate their remote support system, improve efficiency, and enhance collaboration.

Hoosier Energy, a generation and transmission cooperative providing wholesale electric power and services, was using an antiquated remote support solution to connect to and fix employees’ computers. The existing solution had very limited capabilities and was difficult to use. It could only connect to computers if they were turned on and there were a number of steps that needed to be completed before the connection could be made to provide remote support. The success rate of connecting to a computer was only fifty percent as it depended on many factors. The help desk lead, Monty Dine, found it easier to drive thirty minutes to fix issues on-site than trying to use the existing tool. The company needed a better way to provide remote support.

In 2010, DCI expanded the scope of their internal auditing requirements to include access related areas such as user privileges, password rotation policies, review of access sessions, and access history. To address compliance requirements, the team also decided to lock down the development, test and internal business servers to protect vast amounts of sensitive data. This meant that they had to fully restrict root access, reset all passwords after each use, and periodically rotate them — whether they were used or not. Even SSH access had to be limited. To fulfill these needs, DCI required a procedure to delegate and authorize specific limited functions on each server, when access was required. They also wanted different login IDs for different functions on each server, plus a workflow whereby two managers could grant access to specific functions at particular times. Activity on the servers also had to be tracked by ID, including the functions allowed by each ID.

JMC IT, a company that provides IT support and expertise to companies and organizations across the UK, was looking to expand its remote support solution. The company's clients are primarily located within the North of England, but often have remote or satellite offices around the UK, Europe, US and Asia. Changes in IT, like greater calls for staff flexibility, the evolution of remote working and Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) initiatives, have all had an impact on IT support requirements. Keeping pace with these dynamic IT changes means that JMC is continually looking at its own support services and how they meet customer requirements. Prior to implementing Bomgar, remote access to customer devices was undertaken on an ad-hoc basis and via a wide variety of different technologies. While access was always secure and conducted via VPN or Citrix Access Gateway, the ability to conduct all sessions in the same way was not possible.

The IT support team at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health was struggling to provide high-quality support to the growing number of students and faculty conducting research in remote locations around the world. Traditional support delivery methods were proving inadequate, particularly for researchers in areas with slow and inconsistent network connections and limited phone access. The team was also grappling with the challenge of supporting researchers' access to data stored on secure portals on the university's network via Microsoft SharePoint. The existing remote control capabilities included with Windows and their systems management solution were insufficient to meet the increasing demand for support.

La Salle University, a private Roman Catholic institution of higher learning, was facing challenges in providing IT support to its growing number of faculty, students, and staff across multiple campuses and online programs. The main campus was spread out and the university had recently acquired additional real estate, making it difficult for the IT support technicians to service classrooms that were a considerable distance away. The growing online and international programs presented another challenge as the university needed a way to support those remote users. The university's IT department was in need of a remote support solution that would allow them to expand their IT support capabilities affordably.

The customer faced a significant challenge in managing privileged accounts. They were concerned about the risk of security breaches and wanted to tighten operational practices. The customer was particularly concerned about the potential for breaches due to local admin rights being given to users. They wanted a solution that would allow them to elevate privileges only when necessary, reducing the risk of unauthorized access and potential breaches.

When Michael Romious joined FFVA Mutual five years ago as senior network systems administrator, users could bring in USB drives from home, install whatever they wanted including games, and otherwise modify their workstations. The consequence was that IT spent considerable time dealing with corrupted operating systems and had substantial expenses replacing machines. Rebuilding systems took “a lot of effort” according to Romious, and inevitably users had files in additional unexpected places, requiring manual efforts to retrieve those files. Users were down for a day or more. These incidents took time away from priority IT initiatives and required 3-24 hours each to identify the issue, mitigate and remediate. Educating users was helpful, but users still couldn’t manage themselves, particularly given increasingly sophisticated social engineering exploits.

Norton Healthcare, a major healthcare system based in Louisville, Kentucky, was facing increasing complications in its support center. With five hospitals, 10 immediate care centers, 9,700 employees, 280 medical providers at over 50 locations, and nearly 2,000 physicians on its medical staff, the support center was dealing with a wide range of issues. The support team was interested in remote support as a way to reduce costs and increase productivity. However, they were facing challenges with long phone sessions, increasing escalation rates with the emergence of new devices such as BlackBerry, and the need to support a new hospital. They had attempted to develop a homegrown remote support tool, but these attempts had failed. They were looking for a solution that would connect to all of their users, reduce costs, meet HIPAA compliance requirements, and increase customer satisfaction.

General Communications, Inc. (GCI) is a premier integrated telecommunication provider that has grown significantly over the years. As the number of users grew from less than 500 to over 2,600, compliance and monitoring user access became a priority. The company had large teams of administrators with generic user accounts, which made it difficult for IT management to tie a specific change to an individual user. Motivated by Sarbanes-Oxley, GCI’s IT team set out to improve their security posture through management of users, privileges and access to servers, applications and data. New requirements, specifically the SOX Section 404’s Internal Controls Report, came with threats of $1 million dollar fines if companies were found non-compliant. The IT Security Management team took control of root admins and established preemptive guidelines for what junior and senior admins could access. They quickly realized they needed a solution that could deliver a scalable method for managing user access while offering traceability and verification at a granular level.

Columbia Bank, a rapidly growing Pacific Northwest Community Bank, was facing challenges in managing and tracking changes to Active Directory to ensure compliance. As the bank grew organically and through acquisition, so did its infrastructure. With an increased number of administrators and users, privileged access quickly became complicated and difficult to govern. Any changes made to one area had a ripple effect, making it increasingly difficult for IT leadership to ensure compliance as IT scaled to adapt to the organization’s growth. The Microsoft tools they used for auditing did not provide enough visibility into changes or the source, making it difficult for the IT department to pinpoint and resolve issues. Furthermore, a lack of clear reporting showing the “who, what, where, when and why” of changes posed a risk to compliance.

Pure Technology, a UK-based IT support services provider, was looking for a way to enhance its customer support capabilities. The company's Managing Director, Danny Long, recognized that the evolving IT infrastructure environments were making remote IT support a possibility. However, the initial remote support solution Long evaluated did not provide the accountability he was looking for, as it did not allow for the review of past support sessions. He also had concerns about the reliability and security of several cloud-based remote support solutions on the market.

BMC Software was facing several challenges related to security and compliance. They were looking for a solution that could reduce the risk of security breaches, shrink the organization’s attack surface, reduce security data overload, meet compliance regulations, tighten operational practices, and integrate with other security solutions and BeyondTrust privilege management solutions. They were also looking for a solution that could provide agentless network scanning, local, agent-based scanning, web application scanning, patch management, configuration compliance, and regulatory reporting.

Redner’s Warehouse Markets, Inc. is an employee-owned supermarket chain operating 44 warehouse markets and 19 quick shops throughout Pennsylvania, Maryland and Delaware. The company faced a challenge in providing efficient and secure technical support for its busy store environments. The company’s IT support team had to manage approximately 1,300 devices, including 700 point of sale (POS) registers, 400 back office machines handling tasks such as accounting and inventory management, and 200 corporate PCs and laptops. The process of establishing sessions to support these devices was complex and time-consuming. Additionally, as PCI payment security standards evolved, the company realized it needed to enhance security with respect to connecting to its POS registers.

The technology needs of District Five are supported by two help desk personnel and 13 representatives in the field. For remote support, District Five previously used a tool that came with its ticketing software and later moved to free tools such as Join.me and TeamViewer. However, the technical support team found that these tools lacked the features necessary to provide sufficient remote support to the growing district and decided to look for a more robust remote support solution. In researching possible solutions, Childs narrowed the choice down to Bomgar and LogMeIn Rescue and conducted a trial of both solutions.

Ch2 M Wg Idaho (Cwi) was facing a significant challenge in managing privileged accounts. The company was at risk from security breaches and was looking for a solution that could reduce this risk while also lowering the total cost of ownership. The company also wanted to remove admin rights from users, elevating privileges only when necessary. Additionally, the company needed a solution that could audit and alert changes in Active Directory.

Prior to 2009, Smiths Group operated under a decentralized IT model, with each of its divisions having their own CIO and managing their own IT independently from the rest of the company. Recently, the company made the strategic decision to consolidate its IT functions, bringing its divisional resources together into one global team. As part of this restructuring, Smiths Group needed a way to centralize its user support processes, which had previously been handled regionally with a multitude of different help desk systems. The company desired a solution that enabled support technicians to control remote computers and provide support to more than 14,000 internal users. There were also strict requirements for security. As a result, Smiths Group’s goal was to find a multi-language, centralized and highly secure remote IT support solution.

CABESP, a healthcare service provider in São Paulo, Brazil, was facing increased regulatory demands and the need to minimize potential internal privilege misuse and prevent external attacks from leveraging privileged credentials. The company sought to take control of privileged accounts across their high-value IT assets. With no privilege access management (PAM) solution in place, and the scope for privileged attacks continuing to expand, the team meticulously vetted PAM vendors, conscious of finding a long-term fit that could grow with their environment and evolving needs.

Stephen F. Austin University (SFASU) was in need of a remote support solution that could help users get support on a more global scale. Prior to this, the university had traditional phone and foot support operations, which included a walk-in and phone support center for students and phone support or student worker assistance for faculty and staff. However, these solutions were not sufficient for the university's needs. The university was also embarking on a major project to deploy a new ERP system and saw the value of using a remote support tool to support and train multiple departments. Furthermore, with one of the largest forestry programs in the United States, SFASU has several remote sites that require support. A remote support solution could end some challenges other IT staff had with supporting users at the distant research locations.

In the spring of 2010, the University’s Enterprise Information Technology Services (EITS) department began researching remote support solutions for a University-wide project to migrate separately hosted email and calendar applications into a single Microsoft cloud-based solution. The EITS department team, including IT professional specialist Rachel Moorehead, considered a number of possible options for remote support but soon turned its attention to Bomgar when they learned other departments were already using it across campus. One of the University’s top priorities was having the ability to support a wide variety of devices. “We don’t standardize any of the devices used on campus, even with faculty and staff, because we don’t want to do anything that would inhibit creativity. So we have Apple, Linux, and Windows machines, as well as all the new mobile phones and tablets with iOS and Android operating systems,” said Moorehead. With over 100,000 email accounts at the University, the EITS team knew the migration project would require a remote support solution to get everyone’s desktop and mobile devices set up.

The University of Miami (UM) decided to consolidate several disparate IT organizations across the University’s many campuses so that the approximately 600 IT support professionals could work more closely as a unified team. As part of that initiative, the University of Miami IT (UMIT) department deployed ServiceNow IT Service Management software and a number of project-oriented software solutions. UMIT was also interested in consolidating to a single remote support solution, rather than continuing to use the many ad-hoc solutions previously employed by the various campus-based IT departments. One of UMIT’s goals was to better support the variety of devices used on campus. Many users at UM have Mac computers and several of the remote support solutions did not adequately support them.

Wilkes County’s IT department supports approximately 400 county employees and 700 computers, servers and other devices located in 17 county sites. Major sites include the sheriff’s office, health department, landfill, animal control and the airport. Before the county implemented Bomgar as its remote support solution, the IT department used Windows built-in freeware tools to provide remote support to users. However, this software was not always effective, and trips to the county sites were often required to assist users. When a decision was made to roll out laptops to the sheriff department’s patrol unit, Adams knew that finding a new tool for supporting those devices when the sheriff’s staff was out on the road was critical.

The Green Clinic, a multi-specialty healthcare group in Ruston, Louisiana, operates a primary office, a hospital, and six satellite facilities. The clinic's IT department was using LogMeIn Rescue and LogMeIn Central to provide remote support to users. However, these tools did not support screen-sharing, a feature that would allow the IT team to remotely teach users how to perform tasks independently. This lack of functionality meant that training required either a costly trip to the remote location or downtime as the employee traveled to the main location for workshops. As clinic personnel began relying more heavily on smartphones and tablets, the IT department saw the need for a remote support solution that could support those devices as well.

Indiana University (IU) had a need for a more efficient remote support and chat capabilities. In 2007, the IU Clinical Affairs schools had four service technicians supporting approximately 600 desktops, as well as 800 faculty and staff. The technicians, after unsuccessful attempts to incorporate remote support into their workflow, typically needed to make a site visit when a device required attention. The service technicians tried other tools, but these solutions were slow and they often dropped connections. The university's University Information Technology Services had developed an extensive chat support resource, but when the company providing the solution was purchased, the support for the solution began to deteriorate.

Intility, a Norwegian company providing a cloud-based IT platform and 24/7 IT management services, was using a variety of tools to provide remote support to its users. However, an internal analysis of the effectiveness of the company’s remote support capabilities led it to search for a more robust solution. The company needed a solution that could deliver the security capabilities and range of features required to meet its goals. Providing robust support for business productivity software and specialized applications was also an important goal. The company needed a solution that could help it avoid downtime for these kinds of applications and provide effortless access to its clients’ systems, no matter what operating system they’re running.

The Health Services Office of Information Technology at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte was facing challenges in managing the information technology needs of the staff and clinicians working in Student Health Services. The office also had to handle routine maintenance on various technologies used in Student Health Services, including medical diagnostic devices. With buildings at complete opposite sides of the campus, and more devices being added to the mix, the need for more efficient support became apparent. The typical response time from incident reporting to resolution was approximately 6 hours, which was inefficient and time-consuming.

AMOCO Federal Credit Union, a regulated financial services organization, had the ongoing responsibility to ensure the security and integrity of the organization’s network, systems, and data. The Information Systems and Technology (IS&T) department had been using Bomgar Remote Support with an on-premises appliance deployment for several years. However, they saw the need to heighten the organization’s security even more. They needed a solution that could provide robust control over individual privileged user actions and fully control the rights given to internal users.

NHS Greater Manchester Shared Services (GMSS) is a large healthcare support service provider in the United Kingdom. They work with 12 regional clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) serving a population of 2.8 million. Their clients include CCGs, local authorities, over 600 healthcare providers, and other public and private sector bodies, primarily across the Greater Manchester region in the UK. The organization was in need of a solution that was both flexible and secure, as they handle large volumes of sensitive patient data every day. The solution needed to be highly configurable to meet their specific support needs, without compromising on strong security.

ANATEL, Brazil’s National Telecommunications Agency, was using Microsoft’s Lync collaboration and instant messaging application for remote desktop support. However, when ANATEL refreshed its workstation fleet in 2014, they needed a more robust remote support solution as the Lync tool did not support the operating system of the new workstations. Additionally, the organization adopted a new set of security policies that required a remote support solution with more advanced security features. The Service Desk wanted to expand its capabilities so that it could provide remote support for the organization’s increasing number of mobile devices and its full range of network assets.

Northwell Health was initiating plans to replace its existing IT service management solution and wanted to ensure that its new approach to providing IT services included more robust remote support capabilities than the health system had at that time. It was also critical that the new solution comply with stringent data security regulations that Northwell must meet, such as HIPAA. Turpin researched a number of potential remote support solutions, but only Bomgar met all of Northwell’s requirements.