The Importance of Technology

Daniel Webster College is a private New England academic institution with a strong focus on aviation and aeronautics. The school offers numerous degree programs in the aviation field with emphasis in technical and management disciplines.

Technology plays a key role in academic life at Daniel Webster College. The school’s computer systems are used in virtually every classroom and across computer labs on the 50 acre campus. The campus offers wireless internet connections so students and faculty can work and communicate almost anywhere. Faculty members use a combination of electronic presentation software and internet instruction in the classroom. If computers or the network go down, instruction can be significantly disrupted.

Distance learning programs and a satellite campus in Portsmouth, NH are equally dependent on technology systems.

The Geography Problem

Keeping all of this technology up and running falls on the shoulders of Joe Donovan, IT Director, and Josh Bernard, PC Manager. Mr. Donovan reports that the distribution of computer systems across 11 buildings at the Nashua campus and at the satellite facility in Portsmouth presents a real challenge.

“We have approximately 560 full-time students and 200 faculty and staff,” states Mr. Donovan. “At the Nashua campus we support 125 PCs for students in various buildings and computer labs and 200 PCs for faculty and staff, not including about 30 servers, numerous network systems, and computers at the Portsmouth campus. If these systems go down, we are the first point of contact.”

What makes this so difficult is that all of these systems are spread out geographically in such a way that it takes a great deal of time to get to them, let alone fix them.

The Nature Of Support Calls

Supporting the 325 desktop machines falls primarily to Josh Bernard. Mr. Bernard reports that the single biggest problem they see on a routine basis is performance issues from spyware and other problematic software downloaded from the internet.

“It doesn’t seem to matter how much anti-virus or anti-spyware we deploy, they always seem to pull it on their machines and then they’re calling about pop-ups and slow-downs,” states Mr. Bernard. “It seems all of the other problems they report all relate right back to this one major problem.”

The SyAM Software Solution

Mr. Bernard reports that when users call he will usually log into SyAM Software’s Server Monitor Central first and begin to search for a checklist of likely issues he sees on a routine basis. “Have they installed any new software? Is there any process that I don’t recognize on the list? Is there anything new or different? Then we’ll check hard-drive, processor, and memory utilization. The big one we’ll check is how long the machine has been on. When users don’t reboot for over a week, this leads to problems,” states Mr. Bernard.

Before Daniel Webster College installed SyAM Software’s Server Monitor Central, nearly every support call required a physical trip to the user to resolve the issues. “We could look at some of the minor things,” states Mr. Bernard, “but it usually involved a trip at some point. With SyAM Software we can now get a good idea about what’s going on and solve a lot of the problems without getting up from our desk. Now, for many of our support calls, we can resolve issues remotely using SyAM Software.”

For some organizations, resolving issues remotely is a convenience. However, for Daniel Webster College, remote diagnostic and resolution capabilities have improved productivity, reduced work-loads, allowed IT staff to focus on important projects, and greatly enhanced employee satisfaction.

The Benefits

Mr. Bernard reports that the support call work-load goes through peaks and valleys. Sometimes I can get 3-5 calls a day and at other times I’ll only get 3-4 calls a week,” states Mr. Bernard. “The real value for me is in the time savings.”

Mr. Bernard reports that calls that used to take an hour and ten minutes now only require 10 minutes with SyAM Software, a decrease of 85%. “It seemed like every time we made a trip we got drawn into hallway technical support for questions about home PCs or issues that could be dealt with by the help-desk, “ states Mr. Bernard. “With SyAM Software, I get the support call, log into the user’s machine from my desk, fix the problem, and go back to work on whatever project was at hand,” states Mr. Bernard.

While resolving technical support issues is an important part of the job, both Mr. Donovan and Mr. Bernard are constantly working on upgrades, new hardware installations, and other projects for the college. SyAM Software has enabled them to be more productive on these projects because support calls now take less time.

“You have to understand that we’re on call basically 24x7,” states Mr. Donovan. “This summer I got a call while at a softball game. I logged into my wireless account, got on Desktop Monitor, and resolved an issue at the Portsmouth campus 45 minutes away without leaving the game. SyAM Software made that possible.”