Raison d’être of a Support Community

day1.pngIn September 2016, we became a member of Dell Technologies. When I attended a huge Day1 event in Japan, I felt it was a good time to reconsider the raison d’être of our Dell EMC Support Community since we will experience lots of (good) changes over the next several months.

Why did we develop the Dell EMC Community Network (DECN)? I did not know the answer since when I first became a community manager years ago. However, I could guess some of the reasons: Probably it was created as a digital communication and corroboration space in which users could share information, acquire knowledge and get experience. In addition, as a company’s point of view, Dell EMC would expect to get more customer engagement and support case deflection. These reasons turned out to be all correct! But, let’s start thinking in a different way….

Dell Technologies deals with IT infrastructure, which by definition is “The basic physical and organizational structures and facilities (e.g. buildings, roads, power supplies) needed for the operation of a society or enterprise.”

I see. This is not far from what I was thinking. IT is definitely a form of infrastructure. Many businesses around the world cannot operate their day-to-day business without it. However, IT is a virtual form of infrastructure. In other words, we cannot leverage IT in the same ways as the other (more tangible) infrastructure examples.

What do we need to do to make IT a more simplified, more tangible infrastructure? My answer is “We need great products with great IT infrastructure engineers.” As we all know, Dell Technologies provides industry-leading products. And, what about the other point? IT infrastructure engineers? I know there are hundreds of thousands of great engineers who operate/monitor Dell Technologies products every day.  At the same time, I know some Support Community users are struggling to handle their products. I’d like to continue to assist in the growth of a place that helps customers and employees grow to become successful IT-infrastructure engineers in their companies.

As a Dell EMC community manager, what I’d really love to hear from our community members in the coming years is something like “Thank you Dell EMC for your products and your Support Community! The Dell EMC Community Network enables us to continue focusing on our own business, while gaining the advantage by using leading Dell Technology products and leveraging the expertise of infrastructure engineers on the DECN.”

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We are here to help you. And I am pretty sure community members help us as well! Please join our support community and start on a journey to make IT more simplified and useful with Dell Technologies.

Yutaro Uehara

IT Social Engagement

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ueharaus

About the Author: Yutaro Uehara

1998 - 2005 worked in NTT Communications (aka NTT) 2007 - joined EMC Australia as a call center agent 2010 - transferred to EMC Japan to start up a new call center in Tokyo 2011(when a huge earthquake hit Japan) - started working as a VNXe support engineer 2012 - launched the Japanese Support Forum in DECN2017 - took over Ask The Expert program admin roleI am working as a program manager of Ask The Expert and moderator/contributor of the Japanese support forum in DECN. Qualifications- EMC Proven Professional [Associate] Data Science Associate [Implementation Engineer - Specialist] Symmetrix Business Continuity Network Attached Storage CLARiiON Solutions Backup Recovery - Avamar [Technology Architect - Specialist] EMC Storage & Information Infrastructure- Commercial Specialist LPIC level3 300,301