How Do You Cross the Bridge?

What a start to 2014! It’s been an EMC whirlwind of strategy, direction and customer engagement as we jump head first into 3^rd Platform and the journey to the Hybrid Cloud. It’s an inflection point for information technology as we see a generational change accelerate toward mobility and exponential data creation.

While it can appear scary – it is also extremely exciting when you consider the place that EMC has in this change. Jeremy Burton’s recent blog provides an excellent overview of this industry change.

Simply put everything we do will be disrupted by software and digitization. Not just in the workplace, but in everyday life and our Customer Service team will be no different.

I titled this blog “How Do You Cross the Bridge?” because there are many answers to that question. You can think about it, crawl, walk, run, or sprint. As a business we’ll do a little bit of them all in regards to 3^rd Platform. We recognize the need to change and “Business as usual will not get us to the promised land” is our new mantra.

Before getting carried away, our day-to-day functions in 2nd platform are still mission-critical to our customers and they remain dependent on this well-established partnership. That will not change in the short-to-medium term.

But our customers will be more reliant on us in guaranteeing business continuity as their respective transformations to Hybrid Cloud and 3^rd Platform evolve. This is where Customer Service will be the foundation of our customers’ success.  Our collective knowledge and experience is more critical than ever as we shape this industry change, and we’ll provide it however our customers choose to consume it.

We will continue to focus on solution support– operating in a silo is no longer an option. Solving our customers’ business problems becomes paramount, and ensuring customer stability is equally critical, regardless of the products in each customer’s stack. We will do this in different ways, some traditional, but many non-traditional via knowledgebase, mobility, forum and app evolution. The key is that the power of change is in our own hands – let’s embrace it.

EMC has the product portfolio to across the bridge to the 3^rd Platform and the Hybrid Cloud. That much is very evident. The key will be ensuring our customers know we are ready to partner and lead their business across that bridge too.