In this new era of open standards, the balance of power has been returned to the customer. Successful technology companies will be those that focus on customer service. Today, odds are against a proprietary software company using pure product innovation to gain a competitive advantage. Innovating with purpose, integrating responsive customer service - this is how to deliver Return on Investment (ROI) for the enterprise.
In this new era of open standards, the balance of power has been returned to the customer. Successful technology companies will be those that focus on customer service. Today, odds are against a proprietary software company using pure product innovation to gain a competitive advantage. Innovating with purpose, integrating responsive customer service - this is how to deliver Return on Investment (ROI) for the enterprise.
The Open Source community, including Red Hat, ensures customer success by delivering solutions that have a lower cost of ownership, enable efficient IT process, and maximize choice. It leverages the innovation of the open source community to build enterprise-class products, and package these products with high quality service and support. The result: practical, powerful business solutions that deliver tangible results. It's about knowing exactly what customers want; capturing the right amount of innovation to ensure long-term success; creating practical ways to mitigate product risk; being responsive to specific business problems; allowing customers to choose the right technologies and to switch freely between them; and keeping costs low in the process.
Successfully implementing technology is hard. Great services make it easier. Combining knowledge, responsiveness, accountability, and a proactive Approach, Open Source companies like Red Hat have a service strategy that defines an extraordinary customer experience.
Successful implementation requires deep knowledge of the system's architecture as well as the business it supports. Savvy customers know that developing a deep understanding of the system ultimately reduces project risk and cost. Red Hat Global Learning Services, for example, provides technical training to help ensure customers get practical, usable information about how to maximize the power of the open source stack.
Getting fast answers and resolving issues quickly is also of paramount importance. Online capabilities like Red Hat's online Knowledge base and web ticketing capabilities are the key to providing customers an efficient means of resolving issues. While the more complex issues can't be solved on first contact or on the web, but the Open Source community has developed several processes to efficiently provide answers to customer requests for security, fixes, and new features.
Heading off issues before they arise is one of the best ways to delight customers. The Open Source communnity do this in a number of ways. First, when it encounters an issue that could impact other users, the problem and the proposed fix are posted on the community web to ensure that the information is available to all users in an efficient way.
In addition to reaching out to customers in advance of production support issues during critical business events, the open source community proactively works on code auditing, testing, and vulnerability remediation to avoid security intrusion before it happens, constantly innovating new technologies to help reduce the impact of future security.
However, not all projects can use open source. The key to success is determining which projects make sense for open source. To get started, treat each product individually. Savvy organizations consider both commercial and open-source options for projects, and choose the right product for the given situation. Then evaluate by extending the time horizon to the realistic life of the application, it may tip the balance toward open source. Finally, take the entire organization into account. While a specific open-source project may not offer great ROI, the cost benefits of pioneer applications often materialize downstream in later projects that are able to adopt the open-source package. Even if you purchase enterprise licenses for your commercial products so that your marginal cost for a new application is effectively zero, keep in mind that someday, when those licenses are up for renewal, that marginal cost may be much higher.
Because ROI is so tangible, however, it is critical to address it explicitly. Just keep in mind that there is no single answer; you need to find the right choice for your organization and your application.
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