The Evolution of IT Support: From House Calls to Remote Care

IT support was purely a "boots-on-the-ground" endeavour prior to the age of connected networks and contemporary RMM platforms with PSA software. The company had to call a technician and wait for them to come on site if a computer crashed or a server went down.

After arriving, the expert would hand go through each machine's physical checklists and system records. Businesses were unaware of the true condition of their gear until something broke since it was a slow, reactive process.

The 1990s: The SNMP Breakthrough

When the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) was introduced in the early 1990s, things started to change. The ability for systems to transmit data back to IT specialists was the first significant step toward remote oversight.

These early tools weren't particularly easy to use, though. They were quite expensive and very difficult to control. Only large organizations with expansive infrastructures could afford to adopt them due to the high costs and requirement for proprietary network centers. Remote monitoring was an unattainable luxury for the typical small or medium-sized business (SMB).

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