It’s all about the customer…

I was a customer
Before becoming a vSpecialist with EMC, I was a systems engineer/architect in the SaaS space.  In that environment, I managed several storage platforms from IBM, NetApp, and EMC.

In many small shops, there are a few people performing different roles.  Sometimes there are 1 or 2 storage people, 1 or 2 virtualization people, 1 or 2 Active Directory, etc in these environments. Often times there will be a primary and a secondary resource, providing that the workload permits.  Other times, given a heavy workload, it is hard to transfer that knowledge to a secondary resource.

I was speaking with an engineer friend about virtualization/storage/etc. last night, and they had some questions about a wide variety of things.  I talked about everything that I could address, but like my old job, they have a mix of storage from several vendors.  They have both EMC and NetApp storage.

Perceptions
I understand that from time to time, different companies don’t see eye to eye on ways of doing things… And from time to time, there are some Twitpisses on Twitter…

But let’s set the record straight.  We are all here to provide the best products and services to our customers. PERIOD.

Working together for a common goal
When I was a customer I was always very disengaged when I would see a Twitpiss, or other back and forth.  I’ve written a couple blog posts about the disdain I have for fighting that can go back and forth.

I always enjoyed seeing vendors get along for the common good.  Here are a couple examples of some positive collaboration:

• A “Multivendor Post” to help our mutual NFS customers using VMware
  Chad Sakac: http://virtualgeek.typepad.com/virtual_geek/2009/06/a-multivendor-post-to-help-our-mutual-nfs-customers-using-vmware.html
  Vaughn Stewart: http://blogs.netapp.com/virtualstorageguy/2009/06/a-multivendor-post-to-help-our-mutual-nfs-customers-using-vmware.html
• A “Multivendor Post” to help our mutual iSCSI customers using VMware
  Chad Sakac: http://virtualgeek.typepad.com/virtual_geek/2009/01/a-multivendor-post-to-help-our-mutual-iscsi-customers-using-vmware.html
  Vaughn Stewart: http://blogs.netapp.com/virtualstorageguy/2009/09/a-multivendor-post-on-using-iscsi-with-vmware-vsphere.html

Getting help
I reached out today to Vaughn Stewart to help address some NetApp questions that my engineer friend had.

Vaughn was very engaged with my engineer friend, addressed the questions, and provided some additional info on where to get more information.

Thanks
I want to thank Vaughn for the help and information to pass along.

I’m sure that my engineer friend appreciates the help as much as I do.