  This article reviews recent studies of mean-field and one dimensional quantum
disordered spin systems coupled to different types of dissipative environments.
The main issues discussed are: (i) The real-time dynamics in the glassy phase
and how they compare to the behaviour of the same models in their classical
limit. (ii) The phase transition separating the ordered -- glassy -- phase from
the disordered phase that, for some long-range interactions, is of second order
at high temperatures and of first order close to the quantum critical point
(similarly to what has been observed in random dipolar magnets). (iii) The
static properties of the Griffiths phase in random Ising chains. (iv) The
dependence of all these properties on the environment. The analytic and numeric
techniques used to derive these results are briefly mentioned.
