Industry news

Traditional IT help desks 'will be extinct by 2013'

On-site IT helpdesks will be replaced by hosted applications and virtual desktops within the next five years, a web application firm has said.

By 2013, Software as a Service firm Nasstar predicts that "expensive" IT departments will be phased out in favour of cost-effective fully hosted help.

Charles Black, chief executive of Nasstar, remarked that IT has become "a utility".

"And in the same way companies don't have a chief electricity officer to help people plug in and power their devices, so the costly overhead of IT management will be replaced by a simple plug-and-play approach over the internet," he continued.

"Hosted Deskop means there is far less to go wrong than a traditional PC."

Mr Black added that recent breaches in data security and technological improvements made the idea of virtualised technology much more attractive compared to the expensive on-site resources and support staff.

Earlier this month, industry expert Virtual Iron suggested that IT managers in Europe and the rest of the world currently view the implementation of virtualisation technology as one of their highest priorities.