Zappos

The challenge for the Zappos.com's dispatch and helpdesk teams is to support some 1,600 employees located in two time zones and the merchandisers who travel the globe. The teams have used traditional tools, such as VPNs, but with sporadic and limited success.

Added to the problem of geography is the challenge of supporting a multi-platform environment that includes Windows, Linux and Mac. Zappos.com's IT team also sees the evolving requirement to support mobile devices internally. A rapidly expanding head count over the last few years has put more pressure on IT for support and training.

While they continue to write the book on Web-retailing and customer service, one of the friendliest open-sourced IT organizations in the world found they needed a solution for improving internal support.