FROM THE EDITOR IN CHIEF: The maligned help desk: It's time to re- evaluate the whole support process.(Editorial)

There is one area of IT that, despite the desire to worship at the altar of all things e-business, continues to get no respect and is frequently the butt of jokes from most end-users.This dubious distinction of course belongs to the lowly help desk, and by extension to all of the people who toil to keep our systems up and running no matter where we are.

The typical experience of most end-users upon calling a help desk is to be told that they should reboot their system and hope that they don't lose any data. If that fails to correct the problem, the help desk people pass the problem to the next level of support, which usually means taking the machine away and returning …