Re: [FW1] After hours support for Secure Remote

["Robert MacDonald" <rmacdonald@FW1-NOSPAMgfs.com>]

FW1 mailing list. We're open 24 hours a day, 7 days
a week and 365.25 days a year(except for when our
friends at CP are having a bad hair day.)

Wow, what an undertaking! Global or regional?

Are you looking for short term support until the majority
of your users have gotten up and running? Maybe you
could look into short contracts that you pay for by the
month. That way you could contract for a month or so
at startup time and for about two/three weeks after
Christmas to get through the rush(all those new home
PC's!)

Or/then, maybe you could start your own internal mail
server for support issues. Create a web site for this
and allow your users to do searches in problems.

Maybe train the current help desk to learn about
SR/SC and let them see first hand how this goes,
problems and all. Maybe some of them would be
willing to come online at night to monitor your own
support/web site or via email with the problem
children. Sometimes you throw a little money at them
and they'll do it for ya.

Start a pilot program. Create some documentation or
a cheap rip from Dameon's site. Look through the 
archives on SR/SC issues and have those
documented. Create a web site for your users to browse
online to see if any others at your company have had
similar problems. Keep the web site up to date. See
how they handle this 'self-service'. and then plan
accordingly.

Well, if you've made if this far, here's my opinion.
Most of the users will handle it just fine. Some are
really going to muck-up their PC's and blame you.
Of those who get it going, they'll most likely install
AOL 5..err v6....err v7...and muck-up their PC's
anyway.

And of course, you'll become the helpdesk
for all those who mucked-up their PC's, right after
powering them up and hadn't even gotten to installing
SR.

Then you have those who have home networks.
Smart enough to get into trouble, but not to get out.
These are the ones that will drive you to the looney
farm.

Peter, I do wish you the best of luck!
Robert
(p.s. really, I'm quite optimistic ;-)

- -
Robert P. MacDonald, Network Engineer
Team Lead, e-Business Infrastructure
G o r d o n   F o o d    S e r v i c e
Voice:email: rmacdonald@gfs.com

>>> Peter Goodridge <petegdr@yahoo.com> 11/27/00 11:25:25 AM >>>
>
>Hi,
>
>We are again looking for a way to support our Secure
>Remote users after hours.  We allow our employees to
>install Secure Remote/Secure client on their home PCs
>for remote access.  Once they get it installed, and
>use it the first time they do fine.   
>
>However; there are a large number who have problems
>with the install.  They usually do it at night, and
>our helpdesk closes at 6:00 PM.  Therefore; the home
>users have effectively no support.
>
>We have a proposal from our Checkpoint reseller to do
>this support for us, but since they have to charge us
>for staffing up, it on the expensive side.  I'm
>wondering if anyone knows of an outfit that does this
>kind of thing already with SecuRemote, etc.  They'd
>have to be familiar with SR, and able to deal with
>typical end users.  
>
>Thanks in Advance,
>Pete Goodridge




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