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Q & A
Sun's Senior VP of Global Customer Services Discusses the Importance of
Prevention First, Fix Second
Thursday, Sep 9, 3:00 PM PT
Don Grantham, Sun's senior vice president of global customer services,
considers himself as "chief IT health inspector" for Sun customers.
In this interview, he discusses his role in delivering Sun's
"prevent first, fix second" solution - Sun Preventive Services (SPS)
- to customers.
What is the role that SPS can play for customers?
SPS evaluates the entire set of potential risks, from people to
process to technology, and helps make recommendations on what to
change to help prevent problems before they occur.
This is a significant shift from what customers are used to, which
is focused on reducing the time it takes to fix something once they
have a problem.
Preventing an issue versus fixing an issue once it happens is
significantly better for the customer and a very unique approach.
Put short, we're changing the services game by flipping the concept
of "services" upside down for customers.
Can you quantify or provide an example of the type of results
customers are seeing from SPS?
First thing that comes to mind is that customers see the benefits of
SPS on day one of their implementation. On average, five to 10
risks are identified as areas that may cause outages or IT issues.
Again, on day one, they get this information. Then, as customers
migrate to the "get it right, keep it right" approach that SPS
encourages, they see additional long-term benefits such as
predictable outcomes and consistency in IT performance.
Sun then tops these benefits with the incentive to maintain an
agreed upon performance level and rewards the customer with up to a
20 percent "good driver" discount. Customers are saving money for
having a more reliable, higher performing IT operation -- and
getting rewarded for it.
The results really put SPS into context: What customer doesn't want
to see up to a two-third reduction in the number of incidents in
their data center? What I'm seeing is that CxOs and data center
executives really understand the financial and business value of
SPS; and system administrators like the fact that their pagers
aren't going to go off as frequently at 3 a.m.
How is SPS different than competitive approaches to maintaining a
customer's IT infrastructure?
First off, it is important to understand that SPS is based on data
-- leading indicators of risk and lagging indicators of performance.
It's service as a science rather than service by oral tradition.
Second, our competitors are focused on decreasing the time it takes
to fix a problem once it happens. Sun's approach with SPS is
drastically different as it approaches customer infrastructures from
the opposite direction by working to identify and alleviate the
potential risks that lead to problems, before they happen.
Once you have a problem, you've lost the battle. SPS is there to
prevent even getting into those battles.
What is it that customers don't know about SPS or don't realize
until they get started?
One is that it is a proven offering from Sun. This isn't some
unproven technology or methodology that we've whipped up out of the
blue (see press release).
Two is that Sun is the only company in the industry that shares the
benefits gained from operational efficiencies in the form of a good
driver discount - which is real incentive for the customer to
prevent first, fix second. SPS allows customers to save money for
having a more reliable and predictable IT operation. Not such a bad
deal.
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