Music players 'cause trouble' for IT helpdesks
Summary: Survey: IT directors say the use of digital music players is adding to the burden facing support staff. Not to mention user ignorance, users meddling, users working at home…
IT directors have hit out against the use of digital music players at work because they increase the workload on the helpdesk, a study published this week claimed.
The study, conducted by research company Vanson Bourne for software provider Touchpaper, questioned 100 IT directors and found that many IT service departments are under increasing pressure.
Two-thirds of IT directors polled said they thought that the trend for gadgets such as iPods and smartphones had increased their department's workload. Two factors were cited — consumption of network bandwidth by users sharing music over the Internet, and the use of company storage space to store music files.
The study also claimed that downloading songs and other files from peer-to peer sites could breach security and cause network downtime.
Jon Collins, principle analyst at Quocirca, said that the use of MP3 players at work should not in itself cause any extra work for the IT department, but it could cause a hidden threat via the IInternet. "There could be concerns about staff transferring files and using the corporate network to download files from peer-to-peer Web sites," he told ZDNet UK.
The use of digital music players at work was just one of several key issues that IT directors said were responsible for triggering unnecessary IT support queries.
This list of pet hates for IT departments also included; users trying to fix problems themselves; users' lack of basic IT skills; and users not following guidelines, as well as the unauthorised use of devices such as MP3 players.
Home workers raised also concerns among half of the IT directors surveyed, who feared friends and family would be able to tamper with work laptops.
But despite these concerns, the survey's findings suggest there is little impetus for improvement. Sixty-two percent of IT directors complained senior management failed to recognise the importance of IT service and support, while 52 percent said a lack of budget and resources prevented them from improving service and support.
Kick off your day with ZDNet's daily email newsletter. It's the freshest tech news and opinion, served hot. Get it.
Talkback
I for one support a movement towards an IT support only company policy, where 'traditional employee's' (you know, the ones that work in the business) are no longer allowed. This would significanly increase IT helpdesk support levels.
Bringing a MP3 player to work is fine, listening to it is fine - assuming the employer allows the playing of music in the workplace - but attaching it to company property, aka a PC, would have been construed as a breach of IT policy, and probably employment T&C's, and would in all likelyhood lead to disciplinary action.
On the other side, getting help from the helpdesk wasn't always easy, but we weren't allowed to do it our selves (and the lockdown on the Windows configuration options usually meant it was impossible). The biggest farce was 'phoning the helpdesk, getting somebody to come down to sort out the problem, who had no idea how to fix it!
The conversation would go something like:
Me: "Can you please enable X"
Tech: "Errm, I don't know how."
Me: "OK, log in as Administrator, double click this icon, good, now click here, yep, and then there. You need to change the value there to 1 and then save."
Tech: "Was that all?"
Me: "Yes, thanks."