OpenSpace is a large estate agent specializing in managing office space. It has offices, spread through the north of England, connected by a fast broadband intranet offering VOIP (Voice over IP – for telephone calls), file sharing, email and other necessary business applications. The IT department is based in Manchester and, as well as regular maintenance and upgrading of the IT infrastructure, provides help and support to the whole company. Company employees from all offices can contact the helpdesk by phone; a web-form or by email.

On a certain day in June employees from several offices report that they cannot access the main database containing property details. It seems that, following a recent security update, the software no longer recognises the permissions for certain grades of staff.

1) Explain the purpose of a service desk. Use the above scenario to illustrate your explanation, including examples of two possible service requests.

2) Open Space apparently considers security updates always to be “emergency” changes. Explain how this may have led to the problems experienced by OpenSpace employees trying to access the property database.