Dell Inc., the world’s second-largest computer producer, launched revamped services and support for businesses, government, and education. The company aims to boost its business portfolio by a factor of three over the next three years. The "ProSupport" from Dell comes in two sections, for Small and Medium Business and for Large Business, Government, Education, Healthcare and Life Sciences.

One of the two ProSupport levels is designed for companies that employ in-house technical experts, while the other is geared toward businesses that don't have dedicated IT staff.

"Our customers and partners asked us to break the mold of 'one size fits all' reactive support to help them meet the needs of increasingly diverse, global, and mission critical IT operations," said in an official statement Steve Schuckenbrock, president of Global Services and CIO at Dell Inc.

"Dell listened and acted. ProSupport delivers important new features and capabilities that make it easier to get the right support package at the right time in the right way. ProSupport is an important step forward in enabling our customers and partners to tap into a world-class service delivery capability that end-users need -- and toward Dell's broader vision to simplify IT."

For non-IT professionals, Dell Inc. offers through ProSupport "how-to" support for software applications, such as Norton AntiVirus, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Small Business Server, Intuit QuickBooks, Adobe Photoshop, and Adobe Acrobat.

"We have been extremely satisfied with the level of support Dell has delivered over the years, and we're very excited about the flexibility and additional functionality ProSupport offers," said Tim Maliyil, president of Data Guard Systems, in Dell's press release.

The announcement came a week after Dell said it would close all of its 140 U.S. kiosks. Dell opened its kiosks in 2002 to showcase its products for people who like to see and touch computers before deciding to buy. The kiosks enabled customers to talk with sales representatives about computers, digital cameras, printers and other products sold by Dell and ask for information and counseling. However, many analysts have pointed out that kiosks had a very important disadvantage: customers weren't able to buy products there, they still had to order them over the Internet or the phone.