It had been awhile since I talked to the folks at Bomgar, a company that specializes in "appliance-based software for virtual support." However, I got caught up with them on Monday and got an interesting update.

When you look at enterprise or consumer-based PC and other technology support services, companies such as iYogi and PlumChoice (I'm mentioning them because they use Bomgar's solution to establish remote desktop control of PCs), there are a number of options they have in initiating remote connections. They can develop the solution in-house or they can work with companies such as CA (SupportBridge), GoToAssist (Citrix), GoToMyPC, Kaseya, LogMeIn Rescue, SingleClick Systems (I had mentioned them in an earlier blog referencing the Dell Remote Access solution, TeamViewer, and WebEx Support Center (which is owned by Cisco).

It'll be interesting to evaluate these different solutions. In some early conversations, some remote support vendors have told us that their early evaluations of remote solutions providers focused on "attended" versus "unattended" support solutions. Attended solutions required an end-user to be present to download a remote connection client and be present during a remote support service. For providers of subscription-based PC tune-up services that use agents at scheduled times (sometimes in the middle of the night), an attended wasn't feasible, except for break/fix type of incidents.

Today, the key differentiators appear to be multi-OS support. Bomgar's remote solution can support Windows, Apple, Linux, and Windows Mobile. I think that mobile phone/smartphone support is going to be more interesting, too. The LogMeIn Remote service, for example, supports both Windows Mobile and Symbian.