As VMware rolled out its major vSphere launch this week, it’s important for us to show our alignment in how we help customers build, deploy and manage joint EMC-VMware solutions. Integral to this alignment is how EMC drives the highest levels of VMware-related service excellence – particularly from a customer support perspective. While I personally feel that EMC delivers the strongest support in the industry – period, the strength of our customer support leadership becomes even more apparent when we are working with customers who leverage VMware in their environment (whether or not they have all EMC products or a mix of other vendor gear). My opinion aside, as I said in my previous blog post, hearing this from customers, partners and industry influencers is what matters most.
There are many facets to what makes our customer support leadership tangible when it comes to providing the best support for VMware environments. I will quickly touch on those that I view as most relevant. First, simply put, we support more virtualized environments than any other vendor. This is a result of customers recognizing EMC as the best solution. Backing this up, Wikibon published research results last month highlighting that 53% of participants said EMC had the best VMware solution. This is more than all other vendors combined and a true sign that our synergies with VMware resonate with customers. Second is that EMC offers the highest degree of integration with 75-plus integration points between EMC products and VMware. (Read more about this in our press release.)
While it’s important that we have comprehensive integration and a high number of deployments, this must be backed by top-shelf service. Working with TechValidate to poll over 120 customers, we found that nine out of ten IT organizations prefer EMC Customer Support for their virtualized environment over other storage vendors. Key is that this data is customer driven – which is a huge priority for us as we manage our support initiatives by key metrics.
Why do they prefer EMC customer support? Among our core competencies and processes, there are two worth calling out as it relates to our support for VMware environments.
- Broad and deep expertise in virtualized environments, emphasized by the fact that EMC solutions span storage, backup, security, network and beyond. Fast issue resolution requires having the right people with the right expertise and we have and thousands of VMware certified professionals.
- Continued heavy investment in service capabilities. A key example is our ground-breaking work to offer the first B2B CRM solution to assist customers with faster issue resolution.
Since VMware and virtualization play a catalyst in driving cloud deployments, it’s important for potential customers and partners to understand the importance VMware plays in our customers’ day to day lives and operations.
