Tag Archives: support

Please Welcome Isilon Remote Support to EMC

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416First, I want to apologize for only having 1 blog post in January.  In an earlier blog post, I stated that I was kicking off 2013 with a trip to Seattle, WA.  Seattle is home to the headquarters of Isilon, one of EMC’s more recent acquisitions.  While the initial purchase and sale went through a while ago, it was only recently that the installation, sales contracts, and support system was converted over to what EMC has been using for years.  For 2 and a half weeks, I went on site to help the Isilon Remote Support staff understand the inner workings of the new ticket system known as “Service Center” and how it related to their existing system based on SalesForce.

 

Decisions were made as to what would be converted over and what wouldn’t be.  The existing SalesForce database would still be available to support, but in a read only instance.  This would be because only cases that were still open on Saturday January 12th were going to be converted over.  Older closed cases would still remain in the old system for reference, and new cases would be created in EMC’s system only.

 

I’ve been in support long enough to know that not every migration goes according to plan.  As far as this one went, there weren’t too many major issues.  The minor ones were remedied quickly and it seems like everything is finished.  Existing EMC customers should be familiar with the online support interface.  Your Isilon arrays would show up under existing sites if the address on file matched, otherwise you may need to search for new site IDs to follow.

 

The culture over at Isilon is still very much like a startup and I loved it.  Moral is high and it seams people really enjoy their job and care about the customers they help.  It’s no surprise that it was voted one of the best places to work in Seattle.  With any major change to a business process, it is going to take some time for those involved to get used to it.  It seems like everyone was able to adjust quickly and by the end of my stay, the support engineers seemed well adjusted to the new system and processes.

 

All in all I think the conversion was a huge success and I hope you will join me in welcoming the Isilon Remote Support team to EMC.

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On a side note: I had some free time to see the sights of Seattle.  I posted a large collection of photos from my trip (broken down by day) and I hope you enjoy them.

https://picasaweb.google.com/103806208080531222274/SeattleWAJanuary112013

https://picasaweb.google.com/103806208080531222274/SeattleWAJanuary172013

https://picasaweb.google.com/103806208080531222274/SeattleWAJanuary192013

https://picasaweb.google.com/103806208080531222274/SeattleWAJanuary202013

https://picasaweb.google.com/103806208080531222274/SeattleWAJanuary262013

EMC Support: The Next Generation

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RemoteHelpIts hard to hide the fact that EMC’s sales are up.  There have been announcements about record profits, growth, and installations all around.  With this increased boom of installed systems, EMC is also increasing it’s support presence as well.  A few months back EMC announced it had broken ground on a new 7 million dollar support facility in Utah.  This center will add at least 500 new US based support engineers to help.

 

You may be asking what this means to you?  Well in my department (Unified Support) we have added over 60+ new members to our staff.  With the later time zone we can offer extended US based support to our west coast customers instead of doing a hand over at 3 PM Pacific.  This also means there will be more North American based personnel handling cases.

 

Why am I telling you about this? Well I am happy to announce that I will be traveling to this new center to help mentor the new hires.  I will be able to instill upon them my knowledge of Celerra and VNX.  I will be out there for the first two weeks of November, so if any of my readers are in the area and would like to get together for food or drink, leave me a comment or a shout out on twitter.