It wasn't the first time I'd heard this from a frustrated shop owner, so at NACE when I came across a new company that claims to run Pathways, Ultramate and Shoplink estimating programs remotely - on their host computers at their secure facility - I knew I had to learn more about this service. The com-pany is IT Out-source and what they do is neat: they run your licensed copy of the estimating software on their computers in Anaheim, California. "We've spoken to Mitchell, CCC and ADP," claimed Charles Robert-son, the company's sales director, "and offered to show them how we can use our proprietary technology to run their software from a remote location."

IT Outsource runs all three estimating programs remotely from their secure data center.

What happens, according to Robert-son, is the shop licenses as many copies of the estimating software as needed, and that licensed software is installed on the host systems at IT Outsource headquarters. The body shop's own computers run an interface program provided by IT Outsource and use the Internet to connect to the estimating programs. Now, I don't regularly use estimating software but, from what I could see, the Outsource network software was transparent to the user and it ran Mitchell's Ultramate just the same as if Ultramate were installed on a body shops's own local area network (LAN) server.

This IT Outsource service is called Remote Application Hosting, and it's been common in many industries for years. Lots of big companies use outsiders to run their computer operations from remote data centers, but so far as I know it has not been common in the collision repair industry. Robertson says that's because it simply hasn't worked well before (I didn't independently confirm this but I haven't heard of anyone else promoting a remote hosting service to body shops).

The benefits seem obvious: lower system costs because no network servers are needed at the shop; less time and frustration dealing with the problems that LANs and servers seem to cause; updates and backups done regularly by a professional IT staff; problems solved quickly by a full-time IT support staff.

In particular, shop owners who have or who are considering a second shop might want to look into this service, as the complexities of system management increase exponentially when you are trying to manage and coordinate LANS at multiple locations. You don't, however, need a LAN with a bunch of computers to benefit from outsourcing your computer management. Even a small shop with one or two computers whose owners are frustrated dealing with computer problems might consider hiring IT Outsource. "We let them concentrate on fixing cars while we run the computers," said Robertson.

In addition to running estimating software remotely, the company says it can remotely host shop management programs (Mitchell ABS, Rome, etc.), accounting software (Quickbooks) and general office applications (MS Word, Excel, etc.). The advantage to this would occur when the user has a problem and calls for support because the IT techs can quickly check the user's software to see if it is running properly, instead of spending an hour on the phone to figure out if it is a system problem or user error.

Besides remote hosting, the company offers on-site support for customers nationwide and training in all three estimating systems and Rome CompleteShop.

You can contact Robertson at IT Outsource at 714-414-1004. The website is www.itOUT.net.