By Rama Siva in India

The rural bank where I work in western India is frequently a scene of intense frustration. The cause is most often malfunctioning computers. Technology stirs more negative emotion among the bank’s staff than auditors do.

Most technology problems in the bank are simple enough to be fixed by people with basic training in computer maintenance. They can be addressed by simple procedures like running anti-virus or doing a disc clean up. But even such skills are hard to find in rural India.

A promising solution to this problem is remote computer services performed over the network. The concept is not new and the technology came with the internet. But one powerful version of it is to take complete control of a client’s computer over the internet and work on it directly. The tools to let you do so are increasingly sophisticated and can even work well over a dial-up connection.

The banking software used here, is supported by a vendor in the nearest city over the internet. The vendor uses easily available software tools like ‘PCAnywhere’ to remotely fix software bugs and test them. The process is not completely painless but it is a dramatic improvement over what existed before.

Since a good chunk of computer problems involve rudimentary fixes, the field is ripe for remote computer maintenance to take off in India. Such a service may have a huge part to play in easing the reluctance many small enterprises have to embrace technology. The market for such services is promising considering the vibrant and fast growing small enterprise segment in many emerging markets.