A quick re-cap of what PRD Software did during 2011

Taken from a post a I wrote a few years ago.  Rescued from the old PRD forums, now consigned to the digital memory of the wayback machine.

Funny how things have not changed that much.

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Wow, what a week I had doing tech support last week.  I have to share it with you. HelpMaster is being used in over 44 different countries, and last week I felt as if I travelled the world in a single day.  Here was my tech support itinerary. 9:00am : Sitting at my desk in Canberra, Australia, I was remoted into a server in South Africa, installing and configuring the HelpMaster Web Module for one of our clients. 9:30am : Phone rings from a client in Sydney whilst still remoted into the South African server.  Talking to client in Sydney about up-coming release of HelpMaster and one of the new security features. 9:35am : Whilst still remoted into South African server and talking to a client in Sydney, my instant messanger fires up with a our US distributor in Phoenix, Arizona...

This was a reponse I posted in response to another blog.  I thought that I would post it here also because it's a blog entry in itself and reflects my experiences in attending Australian helpdesk and service management conferences for the last 15 years.

You can read the original blog at the Helpdesk Association of Australasia (http://www.hdaa.com.au/blog/index.php/conference-conundrum)

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Why the conundrum? Here’s my take. As a vendor who has been to dozens of PACRIM, ITSMF, CeBIT, Government Technology and other miscellaneous business and helpdesk trade shows, I’ve spoken to literally hundreds of delegates and their “approving” bosses.

As a vendor, we are very interested in the reasons why delegates do, or do not attend such an event, as delegate numbers have a direct bearing on ROI. To this end, I have always made it part of my research to ask people why they have attended and how many...

Just tried to sign up with Google + today only to get this message

"Oops… you need a Google profile to use this feature"

PRD Software, makers of service management and helpdesk software, “HelpMaster”
licenced to use the “Australian Made” logo.

There's no doubt that service management solutions are well suited to the software as a service (SAAS) model.  The fact that there is an increasing number of helpdesk software solutions created purely for the web verifies this.

What always gets me though, is the prevalence of clients testimonials on just about every SAAS service desk vendor website along the lines of "We were up and running in 15 minutes!" and the like.

If only it was that easy...

Crystal Reports is easily the most frustrating and difficult software I have ever used.  For anyone who has ever had to install, configure, develop, deploy, or just make sense of the website, it's forums or it's absurd versioning, you'll know what I mean.

Here's an installation issue I ran into today.

Installing SQL Server can be a tricky thing.  Especially when you're doing it through a command line interface, and using an install bootstrapper to call the SQL bootstrapper.

HelpMaster v10 has been certified Windows 7 compatible