I mentioned in my last blog that the growing wave of new support challenges brought on by an increasingly mobile and connected computing environment were best handled through a better surfboard vs. a better seawall. In other words, past a certain point (a point we crossed about four years ago) the onslaught of new mobile computing devices cannot be effectively supported by increasing the amount of infrastructure (i.e. trying to standardize software client install base or application package). You have to take a different approach using different weapons. Stone was great for castle walls until cannons began to appear, and then wood worked ok (absorbed the cannon ball instead of crumbling) until planes started showing up. A similar situation has happened with support. 

Military analogies are actually more appropriate than you might think. The user and the support staff are in a war of sorts. If you don’t believe me, type "'tech support' jokes" into Google. The user wants to go anywhere and do anything and use whatever the %#$@&* kind of computer he wants to with all his cool applications, and the tech support guy tells him to be a “member of the domain” and “backup regularly” and “use strong passwords” and “don’t download games” and “delete unneeded music” and “you have no need to have an Admin account”. If tech support were a war movie, tech support would be the defending country trying to maintain stable, peaceful, status quo security and the user would be the squadron of Migs heading in for a strafing run. It’s a bizarre twist to an otherwise plausible story that the user and the tech support rep are on the same side. 

The huge problem in all of this is that users are currently arming themselves with the modern day weapons of WiFi-connected laptops and home networks and the tech support crew is still patching the castle walls of a central LAN. In answer to the user’s new demands, often the response is that the user isn’t fighting fair. “You shouldn’t be connecting to unsecured WiFi”, “you shouldn’t be bringing your personal computer and plugging in at work”, “you shouldn’t mess with your VPN client, even if it’s not working”. But the user can and so the user does, and support ends up fighting a battle pitched in no one’s favor (because in another ironic twist, the user wants his strafing run to leave the defending country completely unharmed. After all, the user has to live there). 

To add to the mayhem, industry regulations like HIPAA and Sarbanes Oxley force the support rep to take an even more starched-shirt stance against the onslaught of the user and his toys. So you have two storms heading straight toward each other: one the growing maelstrom of technology finally freed from the cube farm, and the other the counter-storm of regulatory compliance and security. And the support rep is supposed to climb the main mast and defy the collision of two storms like Lieutenant Dan on Forrest Gump’s shrimp boat. 

So that’s the problem, a solution will be proposed when I have more time. Stay tuned for more news from the front lines.

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