'The paradigm of support and services is undergoing transformation'

Srikant Attravanam, Director - Services and Support, Hitachi Data Systems

There is no doubt across any industry today that they ought to transform if not already on this journey, and embrace the new trends of digitization, automation and AI. Even the paradigm of the support and services is undergoing transformation shedding its traditional support processes. Those days are fast fading when there used to be maintenance windows to perform support activities. Businesses today expect 24X7X365 availability be it on premise, on cloud,  hybrid, for their critical services with absolute 100% availability.  Gone are those days when customers used to log a support call in call centre asking for engineer alignment for an issue. Today most if not all Infrastructure support systems are getting automated, becoming highly intelligent and are able to collect, analyse and predict the failures much in advance before it can cause a negative impact loaded with AI and call home features to despatch support engineer or resolve issue remotely and proactively.  There is a paradigm shift in terms of customer consumption patterns as well as expectations from solutions, services and support as customers look towards investing for VALUE and not just on products.
 
We, at Hitachi Data Systems support customers through their complete life cycle of data management, right from providing infrastructure to help create / store / manage / access and derive meaningful insights from data in a secure manner. HDS solutions are designed in a way to help our partners and customers become more cost efficient, enable quicker turnaround time, and improve their overall customer experience thereby bringing in positive impact on business and revenue. HDS supported by our parent Hitachi and other group companies,  already looking towards a new future where IT is expected to play a critical role in deriving insights from Operational Technologies where Hitachi is already a leader with several market leading products, solutions and services.
 
Preferred Customer Services portfolio from Hitachi Data Systems is value-added and personalized support offerings that complement the existing support service plan of our customers. The Block-Time Support allows clients to purchase 16, 32, 48 or more hours up front and use them throughout the year on projects such as moving a system from one location to another, on-site assistance during planned power events, or reconfiguration of infrastructure. Used in conjunction with premium, standard or weekday basic support service plan, this support offers access to the right resources at the right time. We also have our Services Account Manager (SAM) resource option, our customers get a dedicated contact to handle installation and support-related issues that may arise. This helps break down roadblocks and improve transparency. This also aids to minimize and eliminate downtime by quickly resolving issues before they impact the operations. We also offer a wide range of professional services, onsite residency services and as needed consulting services to help our customers continually derive the best value from their investments.  We also enable data security, a suite of services that includes data and media eradication and media retention. 
 
We continually measure our performance post every incident via CSAT score through independent 3rd party survey & project specific TCE (Total Customer Satisfaction score) aiding in consistent improvement and valuing customers feedback. A  business owner, or a CIO or CTO or someone responsible for IT operations, you can be rest assured that with HDS you are in safe hands with best-in-class industry solutions, complemented by world class support and services capabilities that are future looking and aligns to evolving customer’s business needs.