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Bomgar Gives You Access to Nearly Any Device, From Anywhere, to Anywhere.
Updated April 30, 2015

Bomgar Gives You Access to Nearly Any Device, From Anywhere, to Anywhere.

D. SKye Hodges | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Software Version

Enterprise Licensing

Overall Satisfaction with Bomgar

Bomgar is used at the Attachmate Group, which comprises of 4 Business Units: Attachmate, NetIQ, Novell, and SUSE. It is being used by Attachmate support using "Session Keys" while they are doing phone support. The same is true at NetIQ. At Novell and SUSE, we use Bomgar with our customers using the web interface where chat sessions are automatically created, transferred to our Level 0 Customer Service, who, make sure all the necessary information is entered, and then they transfer the customer to an appropriate Support "Queue" (Team). We have around 40-60 teams comprising of Level 2 and Level 3 Support Engineers. We use the Chat, Remote Control, System Diagnostics, and other features of Bomgar to diagnose customer systems/problems and fix them remotely. We also use Bomgar in-house to support internal customers Windows, Linux, and Mac machines. We are amazed at the flexibility Bomgar provides across Support Platforms (including Android and iOS, as well as Linux, Mac and Windows), and supported clients (on all those operating systems as well). Since we have one BU, SUSE, that is entirely Linux, Bomgar was the only option for us. We used to have one tool for chat, and one tool for remote control, and one tool for remote diagnostics, now we get them all in one tool: Bomgar.
  • Clientless Chat: The full-client download takes a little bit of time to download and install, we found that the clientless chat worked great for our customers to be able to INSTANTLY talk to the people they needed to with no downloads, then, when it was time for remote diagnostics or remote control, the agent could inform the customer what was going to happen and give them the steps to update to the full-client.
  • Connections through Firewalls: Since Bomgar uses commonly open ports: 80, 443, we were able to get around problems with other tools that required additional ports to be opened on customers' firewalls. Bomgar gives us the greatest flexibility to run across multiple customers' environments.
  • Jump Clients: Provide our Primary and Dedicated (PSE/DSE) Support Engineers easy access to the systems that they support at their customers' locations. Being able to "Pin" a server, and Jump to it whenever necessary gives us the ability to PROACTIVELY support our high-value customers.
  • Mobile Platform Support as Client, and Agent: Having programs that can be installed on mobile devices such as Android and iOS allows us to both run the Bomgar support program, AND SUPPORT Customers also on mobile devices. This provides us a "Support any customer, anywhere" mantra which allows our workforce, and customers, flexibility.
  • Sysinfo collection: Bomgar's system information tab/collection allows us to get customer hardware information quickly and easily, and puts it into the hands of our support engineers in a common format no matter what the end-user-operating-system is.
  • Being able to "Pin" sessions on Mobile Devices
  • Queue/Team "Routing" Rules, like Vectoring in a PBX
  • Customizable Client Sounds (ie Notifications, etc).
  • Faster Case-time resolution
  • Higher Customer Satisfaction
  • Support Engineers being able to handle multiple cases simultaneously
  • Greater flexibility on Mobile platforms
Bomgar is the only enterprise remote control software that allows for both the customer and agent to be on nearly any operating system. Linux was a REQUIREMENT for us when we purchased the SUSE BU, and our existing vendor was contacted and they informed us that they would not be doing any development on the Linux Platform, so we looked for an alternative, found Bomgar, at the time they didn't support Linux, but told us, give us a few weeks --We were NOT even their customer-- yet they developed a client and agent for Linux, we tested it, loved it, and have been on Bomgar ever since. We couldn't be happier.
A Bomgar Appliance is definitely more suited for an enterprise that supports computers, whether internally (like a HelpDesk-type function), or externally (like a Support organization), because it is an appliance a customer would need to have a datacenter, or a good network connection because it will be the link between support and the customers, I'm sure at some point in time Bomgar (or a partner-type company) would be providing the ability to use an appliance in the cloud (ie like being able to purchase one user license), but for the most part it is limited to a small business or bigger because you would have to purchase the appliance in order to utilize the technology. But it is worth the investment for the enterprise, because it can also be used for presentations and collaboration across and over the internet. Bomgar customer service is so easy to work with, and to request new features, they are still in the growth phase and always looking to improve their product for their customers. Because of that our satisfaction is incredibly high, because they are very responsive to our requests.

Using Bomgar

400 - Internal Support. Customer Support: Level 0, 1, 2, 3. Development. On-site/remote support. Personal access to internal machines from external locations. Sales to demo products/solutions remotely either remotely ON a customer machine, or at a customer's location on a machine in-house. Basically every user in our organization CAN use Bomgar if they would like to, and many of them do, in ways that I'm not even aware of, but the above listed ways represent the ways that Bomgar is most commonly used.
3 - Basically a hardware admin. A Software Admin. And an End-User configuration guru. The hardware admin takes care of the machine in the datacenter making sure it is placed appropriately, given the necessary access inside and outside the firewall, and is responsible for software updates. The Software Admin takes care of configuring the appliance for authentication, as well as what the web interface will look like to customers, and so forth. The End-User Configuration guru is in charge of setting up teams, users, permissions, and rules for teams like auto-assignment and so forth. The product is so easy to install, configure, and maintain that it could be done with just one person, we have 3 because of the enterprise and how different functions are broken up across internal support roles.
  • Support
  • Sales
  • Presentation
  • Working from home and accessing internal machines.
  • Being able to demo at a customer site and access an internal network machine (this is a better solution than virtualizing)
  • collaboration: Multiple engineers being able to work on a problem together
  • supporting our BYOD internally
  • supporting our customers from mobile devices
  • supporting our customers' mobile devices from Bomgar
Besides the fact that Bomgar runs across multiple platforms, operating systems, and devices. We love working with Bomgar, they are continuously innovating and improving their product, they are always thinking of new features to add that improve our ability to support our customers, internally and externally. Bomgar allows us the greatest flexibility between a small chat client, and a full remote control package. The licensing is concurrent, and we staff 24 hours, so we don't need to buy a license for each login, we only need to buy a license for "number of seats" we are very happy with the pricing, maintenance, and support that we receive from Bomgar, and definitely will continue to renew them year after year after year.

Evaluating Bomgar and Competitors

Yes - We used to use Control F1 for our support teams to remotely support Novell customers using Novell products. Novell then purchased SUSE Linux, and had the need to support Linux Operating systems, and Control F1 couldn't do it, we evaluated the company "Bomgar" and at the time they didn't have software that would run on Linux as the Agent (they did for the customer, I believe) and asked us to give them a few weeks, they created a client, even before we were a customer, and won our business. I would definitely recommend Bomgar if your organization is looking for a solution to "upgrade" to, whether you have an internal helpdesk, or an external customer support portal, Bomgar is THE solution to use. But you don't need to take my word for it, get an evaluation license and check it out, it is incredibly configurable, and using the APIs it can easily integrate into your existing environment, including things like emailing chat logs into your CRM systems(s) (again, using the API interface, you would program a custom module to receive web-updates from the Bomgar box, and from there, the sky is the limit)!!
  • Price
  • Product Features
  • Product Usability
  • Positive Sales Experience with the Vendor
  • Third-party Reviews
We had to have software that would run on Linux, we purchased SUSE Linux and needed to have agents (ie Customer support) be able to run software to support their customers on Linux, and we needed customers running Linux to be able to get support just as easily as our customers running other operating systems. Bomgar knocked it out of the park! At first we thought the pricing model was a little steep, but when we learned it was for concurrent licenses not per agent (like our previous vendor's licensing), it was immediately apparent that Bomgar was the leader in features and price! If anyone thinks that Bomgar can be beat, then give them a try, they might surprise you, once you understand their product and licensing model, you may come to the same conclusions that we did.
  • First: We really wouldn't change a thing.
    • We had a need, our current vendor couldn't fulfil that need.
    • We bumped into Bomgar,
      • asked them if they had a Linux client,
      • they said no, but give us a few weeks,
      • we were skeptical,
      • but they delivered,
    • they immediately moved to the top of the list.
  • We were so impressed by their quick action, they immediately became number one on our list,
  • though, to be honest, they had all the features we needed BUT Linux support,
  • so when they added that, then they really, truly, were at the top.
It was fairly clear to us that even if we spent more time, and had more detailed criteria, Bomgar would come out on top, they had everything we needed, and they continue to expand and enhance their product.

Bomgar Implementation

Well, the Bomgar box does need to be place in a location where it is accessible via the internet, so either Outside the Firewall, or inside a DMZ (or inside the firewall with the appropriate port forwarding). User Authentication can be done in many ways, we chose LDAP (I believe you can use Active Directory, Radius, Local Authentication, and a few others). We setup our customer facing portal to allow for "click-to-chat" so we didn't need to install the full remote-support client on a customer machine unless we needed to perform full remote control and diagnostics. We initially set it up to install the full client, (I don't remember if click-to-chat was an option back then or not), but as soon as we figured out how easy it was to support customers starting out in just chat mode, we have a LOT of happy customers now (Since reaching a person on chat is so quick and painless, and then later a customer can install the full client, only if he/she needs to).
  • Implemented in-house
Change management was minimal - The only thing in our organization that required change management was the access to the LDAP directory from inside the DMZ, the only other server that had that kind of access was our Radius Authentication server, Bomgar has a special client that can run inside the network, that connects to the LDAP, and communicates to the server in the DMZ so that is how we were able to do our authentication with very minimal change management, Bomgar has already done the work to make their product so incredibly seamless to implement we basically, installed, configured, and setup in a few days, and were ready to use the hardware/software way ahead of schedule. We are so happy that Bomgar is so easy to implement.
  • Where to place the Hardware (Inside the Firewall, Outside the Firewall, In the DMZ)
  • How to do User Authentication
  • How to configure our Customer Facing Portal

Bomgar Training

  • Online training
  • In-person training
  • Self-taught
we didn't have in-person training because their online training was so overwhelmingly well done. Start by looking at the docs: http://www.bomgar.com/docs/content/index.htm if that alone doesn't answer all your questions, there will be a window that pops up asking if you would like to chat with a sales representative, or a support engineer. Either of them can answer all of your questions as easily as if they were standing there with you, or talking to you on the phone, it is truly the power of Bomgar!
Since we have installed and been running Bomgar software for quite some time now, we have taken the opportunity to attend various web trainings, and they are always very prompt, informative and open to questions/discussions. We appreciate the work that Bomgar does to keep their customer community informed of new features and discussions of further product developments.
The product is so intuitive, anyone can pick it up, play with it, read the manual if you get stuck, and pretty much be able to do 95% of what you need to do to install, setup, configure, and manage the Bomgar product. It has a very easy-to-use interface, and setup and configuration are very user-friendly. Again, look at the docs: http://www.bomgar.com/docs/content/index.htm it's very easy to get all the information you need from reading. OR, the other nice thing is the chat window that appears on their website that lets you chat with a sales engineer or support engineer, it makes getting answers as simple as clicking a button!

Configuring Bomgar

Out of the box Bomgar is very easy to setup, configure, and manage. The configuration can be as simple, or as complex as an organization needs it to be, whether you want one large group of support engineers, or whether you want to break them out into 50 different specialties, whether you want chats to queue up til an agent is ready, or if you want to automatically distribute them to agent, there is so much customization that CAN be done, yet at the same time, utilizing the Out-Of-The-Box functionality is enough to get going right away without having to bother much with advanced configurations.
The best recommendation is to just set it up, and then play around with the features as an "agent" and as a "customer" you will quickly get a feel for how the interface and configuration options work, it is very simple. Then if you need a greater amount of flexibility, read the manual on all the options that are available it it may give you ideas on different things that you can use Bomgar for (this is how we offered the "Jump and Pin" options to our engineers that directly support a very limited number of customers [1-3]). The options are there, but it works just fine "Out-Of-The-Box".
Yes - we have customized the interface extensively - We wanted the web portal to be fully integrated into our customer support portal so we customized that, very easily using Bomgar's "Templates", then we customized the landing page for where we send customers that have "Session Keys" so that they would also feel like they were on our own support portal. Customizing the user interface is so very easy, and Bomgar makes it that way.
Yes - we have added extensive custom code - Using the Bomgar API we have created what we call the "Bomgar Chat Robot" this tool is used to monitor our chat queues and move customers around according to our own rules, we have mentioned to Bomgar about creating this same functionality in the product, and I'm sure they are already working on something like it. Using the API you can do nearly ANYTHING that using the User Interface will let you do, so as far as that goes it is probably one of the most highly customizable pieces of software I've seen.
Besides what has already been mentioned there really isn't more that you could want to do that you can't do using the configuration tools that Bomgar provides, whether customizing the customer interface or the agent interaction, or scripting engines in between that will follow programs that you create (like: For any customer waiting in any team queue for longer than x amount of time, transfer them to a "General" Specialist that can help get the attention of Management to find a person to immediately take that chat). The possibilities are endless!

Bomgar Support

As mentioned elsewhere in my review, Bomgar added the features that we needed before we were ever their customer, we were just checking out possible vendors and Bomgar was on the list, we told them our requirements, and they helped improve their product and impressed us beyond words. We have had very few problems where we have needed to call support, but in those rare instances, they have been incredibly efficient at understanding and solving our issue (one issue was with an API change, now they have a field that keeps backwards compatibility with older APIs to make sure that "things" don't change when you upgrade to the next version). Again, swift resolution, very knowledgeable, always customer focused and oriented.
ProsCons
Quick Resolution
Good followup
Knowledgeable team
Problems get solved
Kept well informed
No escalation required
Immediate help available
Support understands my problem
Support cares about my success
Quick Initial Response
None
Yes - We had an issue after we upgraded a very early version of Bomgar where our API calls were failing, we called support (to report the bug) and found out the reasons for the failure, the API had changed but we didn't read the documentation thoroughly before upgrading (it was mentioned in the doc). But because of our call they made future updates "backwards compatible" so that in case we don't read the documentation again we will not have any issues with upgrading.
I have mentioned this before, and will mention it again, Bomgar solved our problems before we were even customers, we needed a remote control and chat solution that worked on the Linux operating system both as a CLIENT, and as a AGENT, and they solved this problem before we ever signed a contract, they are simply amazing!!

Using Bomgar

Bomgar is so simple to use that we didn't need to have training to show engineers how to use it, we had them install the client, login, and play around with it, they got the hang of it quite easily and embraced using it with customers. When we were acquired by another company they wanted to use Bomgar, all we needed to do is add them into our LDAP directory and allow them to login, they picked it up and began using it with their customers immediately. The software BEGS people to use it once you try it, you will be hooked! Whether you use it to support internal customers, external customers, access your own machines remotely, or just do file transfers, there is nothing that is as feature rich as Bomgar.
ProsCons
Like to use
Relatively simple
Easy to use
Technical support not required
Well integrated
Consistent
Quick to learn
Convenient
Feel confident using
Familiar
None
  • Remote Control (even to a Windows machine where there is no client)
  • Screen Sharing in both directions
  • File Transfers
  • Clientless Chat
  • Easy transition from Clientless chat, to full client remote control and system diagnostics
  • Making Coffee
  • Burning Toast
  • Time Travel
Yes - The Mobile clients, of which there are "Customer" clients, and "Agent" clients, that work on iOS and Android Operating systems, work incredibly well, the gestures are intuitive, the ability to zoom and scroll make it very easy to read on a mobile device, and the Agent Client (which runs on Windows, Linux, Mobile, etc) Can also do some amazing remote diagnostics, like finding out what applications are installed, what is running, and current usage like CPU and Battery Level. The mobile clients are the best I've ever seen.

Bomgar Reliability

Since the Bomgar Box is BOTH hardware and software, it can be purchased in any capacity deemed necessary, so scalability isn't an issue, Bomgar has the experience necessary to create a design that can support as many customer and agent sessions as you can throw at it. We have never had any issues with the Bomgar box and licenses that we have installed.
As far as uptime is concerned, Since Bomgar creates the Hardware and Software, they can make it the most reliable box in our datacenter, and they also have options for availability and redundancy that we didn't need to utilize, we have a manual fail-over process that we can invoke, but there are configurations that would allow for an automated failover as well.
There is no lag-time at all, no matter how many users we have on the box, it is always entirely dependant on the customers internet speed (as we have a very fast connection), that is the only issue I've EVER seen with Bomgar, no matter how many sessions we run the box is always up, always fast, always working.

Integrating Bomgar

If you have web developers that know how to build web-services that can utilize an API, they can create whatever integration you want. If you use any authentication method that allows for LDAP authentication, you can use single-sign-on (as well as Active Directory, or RADIUS Authentication), if you know basic HTML you can customize the portal interface and make it look just like your corporate/support/internal website for seamless integration into any webpage.
  • Siebel
  • Customer Portal
  • Custom Reporting
With Siebel any case that is worked via chat has the "external Reference" ID filled in, and the robot that we created will take the chatlog after the chat session is over, and will email it into Siebel with the case number, so that the chatlog gets appended to the Service Request as an attachment. We have integrated Bomgar into our Customer Portal, so that when a customer opens a Service Request it shows the status of their assigned engineer, either as "Available" or "Not Available" and they can either select their available engineer, or select to chat with a "New Engineer". Our Custom reporting utilizes Bomgar's information collector (which collects data and puts it in a Microsoft SQL Database), and then we move that over to our enterprise Oracle Database server for long storage and reporting purposes.
  • SAP
  • SalesForce
  • DataCenter Inventory processes
We are aware of a SalesForce Integration, I imagine it is easy to integrate with SAP (but haven't checked), and we can use the API to integrate it into our DataCenter Inventory processes.
  • Single Signon
  • API (e.g. SOAP or REST)
  • Javascript widgets
We are using Single SIgnon via LDAP. Using the API we were able to create a home-grown application to monitor the chat queues and move around chats according to our "rules". We have Javascript running on our customer portal to report the status/availability of their assigned support engineer. We utilize an email integration to update our Siebel cases. And we use the data reporting module to collect data that we can use for reporting integration. --Overall Bomgar can be as integrated as you need, or want, it to be!
It doesn't take much skill for any of the basic Bomgar integrations, however if you want to imagine a "skye is the limit" kind of integration, you will need a good webdev that is comfortable using APIs, the Bomgar API is so straightforward that any dev with minimal skill will be able to create integrations til your heart's content. It's such a versatile product that if you can dream it, you can probably do it, but that dream will rest on your developer(s) and the skills that they possess.

Relationship with Bomgar

When we were searching for vendors that provided remote chat and screen-sharing/diagnostics tools, we almost accidentally bumped into Bomgar, we couldn't find the info that we needed (at that time) on their website (about Full Linux Support), but when we reached their sales department they were able to get us to the right people that let us know that they would develop a client that would work for us, and they did! Bomgar knocked it out of the park, Home Run, they really went the distance to make sure that they would fulfill all of our requirements.
Bomgar has always stayed in contact with us, notifying us of upcoming releases, or webinars, or learning events, etc. They are so great to work with, they are always looking to improve the product and make sure that it has the most usable featureset. We love Bomgar software because it simply allows us to do our jobs in the greatest way possible: Being there. Because supporting a customer remotely, while making the customer feel that you are sitting there in front of their computer "fixing it" is the greatest technology!
Bomgar has a couple of different options when it comes to sales, the main thing I remember is that the licenses are concurrent, so even though we needed to licence for 400 agents, we only needed to buy around 100 licences because we were, at that time, supporting 24x7 around the globe and didn't have agents logged in all the time, so licenses is one thing to keep in mind, I believe that they have options for the type of "box" that you buy, and I seem to think that MAYBE I've heard rumors of running it virtually on VMWare or such, but that's something to talk to sales about.
My best advice for dealing with Bomgar is to be upfront about what you expect the product to do, give them as much information as you can, and they will provide you with the best advice on sales, installation, configuration, and support. Bomgar is so easy to work with, they really take customer service to a whole new level.

Upgrading Bomgar

Yes - Of course, upgrades are incredibly easy, and, as always, making a backup is part of the process so even if there is a problem you always have the ability to back out of the upgrade and go back to the previous version. We've never had any problems upgrading our Bomgar box, and neither will you!
  • new features
  • better reliability
  • enhanced reporting
  • integration with our existing CRM
  • API interface
  • LDAP authentication/integration
  • more features
  • hopefully a pure web interface for both the client AND the representative
  • expanded access to more devices (it's not Bomgar's fault that iOS doesn't allow the same access as Android, but it would be nice to have "full" access like on Samsung Android devices)
  • built-in RDP integration
  • skills-based chat distribution
Yes - We had a two week trial when we first started using Bomgar, we tested it, and found that it had features above and beyond what we needed for our support representatives and customers. Once you try Bomgar, you'll find the same thing, and if you find missing features, Bomgar is quick to develop and improve their product, they are very responsive!
Yes - well, when we did the initial evaluation we were on a trial/free version of Bomgar, but we recognized immediately after they created a Linux interface, that this software would be exactly what we needed to do remote customer support for our Windows customers, Linux customers, Macintosh customers, and internally for Android mobile phone and iPhone support. We have expanded our licenses a few times, we appreciate that the licensing model is concurrent rather than per Agent, this gives us a lot of flexibility in our global contact center.