With over 100 Support Desk vendors in the market, packages ranging from free to over $4,000 per advanced user (i.e. Technical Support Rep or Customer Support Rep) and an overwhelming list of architectures, internet services, and features to evaluate, selecting the right IT help desk software for your company can be a time sucking and aggravating process.

The drafting of this article is to attempt to and simplify the procedure for you. This article will deal with ordinary issues that everyone in the help desk software market should understand before making the ultimate choice. Understanding these issues will help you make a more informed decision.

Help Desk Software – Architecture

The issue that seems to cause the most confusion in our industry is client/server web-enabled solutions (C/S) vs. 100% web-based solutions. In general, C/S architected solutions are quickly depreciating. At one point, an excellent step up over main frame solutions, C/S technology has been phased out due to the availability and rewards of web-based solution architectures. The main reason some helpdesk software vendors continue to sell C/S solutions is due to the fact that they do not have the expansion resources to adapt their older product to a web-based architecture. Some of the advantages that web-based solutions have over C/S solutions include:

• No client-side software set up, updates, or support

• Log in from anywhere on the web, anytime with any web browser

• Full access to all features and functions at anytime and from any place

When you begin to demo different customer support software solutions please take note if you are required to load code on your desktop to begin the demo. If so, you are not doing business with a vendor that gives a web-based solution. True web-based architectures need only a web address in order to do a demo.

So, if the vendor emails you a 5 MB exe. file to demo their solution, you are not looking at a 100% web based help desk software solution. The file that business is sending you is either front ending a C/S system or is a complete canned demo on your computer. Make sure you assess the solution you are going to buy! If you do purchasea C/S solution, please note that web-enabled add-on modules will not give you full access to all of the features when you are at a remote location.