University of Birmingham adopts LogMeIn Rescue to help support the computers of its 30,000+ academic population

A Leading Midlands Research and Education Institution deploys remote IT-support solution to provide responsive computer helpdesk services

London, UK, 22 April 2009, LogMeIn, Inc. today announced that The University of Birmingham has implemented the award-winning LogMeIn Rescue as part of its IT helpdesk services to help support the computing needs of its 30,000+ academic population.  The deployment of the remote IT-support solution by the University enables the IT helpdesk services team to rapidly reach and support the computers of its staff and students across and outside the campus.

LogMeIn Rescue is a web-based remote support tool that enables a technician to easily connect to a remote PC, Mac or smartphone, without pre-installing software.  Rescue enables IT technicians to remotely diagnose system issues, manage multiple simultaneous support sessions and resolve end-user issues over the internet.  The solution is used by organisations of all sizes from small independent IT providers to some of the largest companies in the world.

A relatively small IT helpdesk team comprising frontline analysts and technical analysts is tasked with supporting the IT-needs of the University of Birmingham.  Outlining the challenges faced by the IT helpdesk team, Yvonne O’Byrne, Head of Quality, IT Services, University of Birmingham said:  “Our main campus occupies a 250 acre site while a second 80 acre campus is nearly two miles away.  The total academic population consists of 6,000+ staff and 24,000+ students.  With over 40,000 incoming calls from users each year, the range of support requests is broad and each inquiry comes in from a different location around or outside the campus.  When you multiply the frequency of calls daily then it was clear that our IT helpdesk team needed a high functionality remote IT support tool to help cater for a growing and dispersed computer user-base.”

LogMeIn Rescue was one of several web-based remote support tools appraised before implementation as the University’s primary solution for remotely delivering helpdesk services.

“LogMeIn Rescue has helped improve the helpdesk team’s ability to support the computing problems of staff and students,” said O’Byrne.  “With LogMeIn Rescue the University of Birmingham’s IT helpdesk team is able to remotely diagnose and resolve technical issues on PCs and Macs across the campus and support both staff and students offsite, ensuring prompt and effective support for IT incidents.”

University technicians are able to respond to a request for help by simply connecting to a user’s PC with LogMeIn, take control, and ‘rescue’ that user.  By executing support from the helpdesk, technicians spend less time traveling and can resolve incidents quicker remotely.

The rich-functionality incorporated into LogMeIn Rescue has enabled the helpdesk to handle the diversity of remote support inquiries.  Comprehensive diagnostics of hardware and software images, critical system information, file transfer and text-based end-user chat are all available to the technician.

Yvonne added:  “The feature set is powerful yet intuitive to use and the ability to harvest system information has been valuable.  There had been an instance where we had an issue with some computers that were at satellite locations but were not strictly the University’s responsibility.  By harvesting system information from some of those machines we were able to isolate a bandwidth loss that was not down to the University, and we were subsequently able to fix the issue.”

Founded in Edgbaston in 1900 as a successor to Mason Science College, the University of Birmingham is steeped in history with origins dating back to the 1825 Birmingham Medical School.  As one of the first 'red brick' universities to receive a Royal Charter, Birmingham has evolved into the West Midlands’ leading research and education institution, pioneering ground-breaking progress in fields such as gene structure, medicine, space research and communications.

The University features a state-of-the-art visual and spatial technology centre which supports academic research, postgraduate and professional training across all disciplines.  It has been used extensively by Archaeology, to visualize lost landscapes, including the bed of the North Sea before rising water levels covered it several thousand years ago.  The teaching and learning facilities include University-wide computing suites that support teaching clusters, drop-in PC suites for self-paced learning and bespoke teaching rooms for diversified learning styles.

“The University of Birmingham is an educational institution with a rich pioneering history that has grown to a size where its IT-support needs can only be met by a remote solution,” said Erik Driehuis, Vice President, LogMeIn, Europe.  “We believe LogMeIn Rescue is becoming the IT remote support tool of choice for dispersed environments and by deploying LogMeIn Rescue the University of Birmingham is providing responsive computer support to all its users no matter where they happen to be located.”