iYogi: A Virtual, Global Geek Squad?
iYogi's business pitch is pretty basic:
Move over, Geek Squad. Here comes iYogi, a managed service provider of sorts that specializes in remote consumer and small business PC support. More than 70,000 users now pay an annual subscription for iYogi’s remote support services. But the story doesn’t end there.
iYogi’s business pitch is pretty basic:
“Online computer support is simple. You give us the green-light to connect to your computer remotely and we will fix your PC while you kick back and relax.”
Hmmm. Eager to learn more, The VAR Guy traded email with Vishal Dhar, president and head of marketing at iYogi. Here’s a sampling of the conversation.
The VAR Guy: Industry buzz suggests you’re growing and hiring. True?
Dhar: iYogi has been growing very rapidly to support high demand for our support services and an innovative delivery model. We currently have 850 employees, which is up from 650 just three months ago and 450 a year ago. In addition, as part of our unique global service delivery strategy and to support growing North American demand, we are rapidly recruiting and training additional US-based support staff to enhance our current base of 150 employees here.
The VAR Guy: So, are you looking to fill positions in North America?
Dhar: We are aggressively recruiting North American service personnel to support our high demand here and our overall global support strategy. That involves the training and hiring of hundreds of individuals here as well as teaming with other personnel networks and resources.
The VAR Guy: You acquired Clean Machine Inc. earlier this year. What triggered the deal?
Dhar: We announced the acquisition of Clean Machine Inc, a provider of remotely administered PC security and performance management services, in May of this year. Clean Machine was a natural fit as part of iYogi’s global delivery support model, and has helped further extend our market reach and support infrastructure in high growth regions. We expect to leverage the strong leadership, customer base, and remote support expertise that Clean Machine
brings to the table.
The Bottom Line
iYogi sounds like a virtual Geek Squad for small businesses and consumers. At $139.99 a year for unlimited PC support, iYogi seems to have set an aggressive price to troubleshoot consumers’ PCs, printers, MP3 players and applications.
The big questions: Can iYogi scale its business in a profitable way? Are small businesses looking for this type of consumer-designed virtual helpdesk support? The VAR Guy is all ears.
Follow The VAR Guy via RSS; Facebook; Identi.ca; Twitter; and via his Newsletter; Webcasts and Resource Center.
Related
-
Here Come New Products from Extreme Networks' 'Smart OmniEdge'
-
The Doyle Report: How Aruba Can Help Improve the Dreaded Conference Call, Student Security and Asset Tracking
-
Carousel CTO: 'There Is a Real and Growing Talent Shortage'
-
Share the Load: Why Outsourcing Managed Web Services is Better for Your Business
And like all so-called “remote support” services, what do they do when the machine won’t even boot?
Many, possibly most, PC repair issues require on-site support. That’s a reality these services gloss over.
And $140 for “unlimited” PC support? Please. That’s as realistic – even if they are in India – as “unlimited” bandwidth and disk space for $10/month from your ISP.
Remote support has its uses, IF it’s backed up by techs who can go on site as needed.
Richard Steven Hack: The VAR Guy respects your healthy dose of skepticism. Our resident blogger will watch closely as iYogi continues to build its business.
We looked at partnering with iYogi about a year ago. They’re well run and well funded, and have a decent remote support amp; management solution. Clearly their growth indicates that some folks find it appealing.
My guess though is that they are most appealing to micro-businesses, those with fewer than 5 computers and perhaps only 1. Those tend to be the clients with the tightest budgets, and the ones most prone to “DIY” solutions (for better or worse).
I don’t see them getting much traction in the more mainstream small business space, where things like relationship-building, on-site support, and the ability to go beyond just repair and maintenance into things like recommending and supporting “enhanced technologies” (VoIP, electronic document managemnet, SaaS solutions, Search Engine Marketing, etc) become important.
That’s why I think the future belongs to a company that can offer global support and economies of scale with local owners building relationships and providing the on-site solutions. (Not that I’m at all biased in this – since that’s what my company does). 🙂
Chip Reaves, Computer Troubleshooters
Chip: Thanks for the deeper information. Generally speaking, it sounds like iYogi has considerable momentum in the consumer market. And The VAR Guy’s best guess is that iYogi plans to potentially offer some more localized support in North America. But your points about local solutions providers working closely with local business owners are well taken.
We offer services from as low as about $1 a day.
Not all you can eat just patching and full antivirus support. AVAST Bitdefender Viper(not that we will ever deploy that again) AVG. That model will work in a fully proactive environment where key services are monitored and fixed before the customer even knows what has happened. We are developing our own scripts to suplement the short commings of our platform of choice.
Things like restarting services that are hogging resources before it becomes an issue.
Companies we deal with would loath services like above if they have no onsite support. We aim to gain high quality customers that are able to look after simple issues like plugging in a usb. Relationships are important!! We have about 4 techs for a group of sites all being onsite techs or in the workshop for major repairs.
I dont know about anyone else but I would hate some random looking after my PC at work.
We offer cheep services compared to others but you have to trade off if people require those services. The less they use them the better so you have time to manage them automaticaly via new scripts to automate tasks.
The point of small businesses requiring a more comprehensive support relationship is well-taken. iYogi has its place in the consumer market where most local computer consulting companies’ hourly rates are simply too expensive for home computer support. Most small businesses–even if they have only one or two computers–want a technology partner, the so-called “trusted advisor”, that not only answers his or her cell phone at all hours, but understands their business in a strategic sense and can offer solutions that have demonstrable return on investment. iYogi, and others, can have the low-end of the IT support market, but will struggle mightily with even the smallest of businesses for this reason.
Just as a followup to this old thread. I recently had a home user client who contracted with iYogi for support. He had a spyware problem and iYogi got him PARTLY back up and running. Unfortunately they introduced other problems – for instance, they apparently used msconfig to shut down some services temporarily and did not reactivate them when they were done troubleshooting. As you know, Microsoft does not recommend using msconfig to make permanent changes to a Windows system.
Also, their spyware cleaning was not perfect. I installed Avast, Malwarebytes Antimalware, and ThreatFire3 – my usual home user kit of anti-malware programs – and scans found a number of left over spyware.
I forget what other problems he still had, but it took me several hours to get him back in good shape.
There’s just no substitute for on-site support in most cases. Remote support is useful mostly for guiding a client in the operation of his machine or fixing a problem in an application, not so much the OS, still less a hardware issue.
And if you pay iYogi $140 a year and only use them once or twice for minor issues, is that cheaper than paying a local tech guy $25-50/hour for, say, four hours when you really need him? By definition, the business model for iYogi assumes MOST clients will NOT call them during the year for more work than the client bill justified. Whereas the local tech guy bills for exactly what he does at the time.
I offer small business clients an “all you can eat” support service which includes unlimited telephone, remote AND on-site support for a mere $500/month. A lot of small businesses apparently aren’t willing to go that route, but in the end having a guy on site up to 20 hours a month or more to see what your machines and your people are doing is a good investment. Your alternative is to hire an IT guy for $50K a year or divert your office manager from their main duties to do it – which means it will either cost more or it won’t get done.
$140 a year – you get what you pay for.
Richard: The VAR Guy appreciates your personal experiences. But our resident blogger also cautions readers that experiences will vary from one user to the next. Come to think of it, it’s been awhile since The VAR Guy touched base with iYogi. Time to do so. Keep the feedback coming, Richard.
-TVG
Great Article VAR Guy. I see other companies in this space that seem to be making moderate strides: QResolve.com, PlumChoice.com, JupiterSupport.com, Support.com
Nice article VAR Guy! My company has used the services of Geeksquad.com, and PlumChoice.com a few years ago, but has been with AdachiCompuTech.com since May 2010.
Stay as far away from Iyogi as you can. I have a client who got hooked up with these people. He was having a problem that turned out to be a bad motherboard. He was told they could help. They faked a virus looking screen and then tried to sell him their services. After he declined his computer started running worse and worse. I had to scrub his disk to try to get rid of their “service”. They put a support dock program deep inside of the programs folder. It is hidden even when you unhide folders (on XP). I am currently trying to get rid of this since I believe it is making his system bog down severely. I have deduced this using msconfig.