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NextNine Embraces Challenges on Road to Growth Group Editorial Director Back in 2007, IDC (News - Alert) presented a white paper wherein they discussed the pressure that support organizations were under to improve the quality of their services and to reduce or eliminate downtime for their customers’ critical business systems.
According to the IDC report:
Furthermore,
NextNine provides support automation solutions that are designed to enable vendors to proactively monitor and service their products at the customer site and automate the discovery, diagnosis and resolution of problems before the customer is disrupted.
Leveraging the company’s Virtual Support Engineer, NextNine’s solution also allows technical support organizations to engage in proactive monitoring, remote monitoring and diagnostics, self healing and more.
NextNine deploys the Virtual support engineer to proactively monitor a customer’s site, acting as a smoke detector, although as Nimmy Reichenberg, NextNine’s vice president of marketing puts it, “we take the virtual support engineer, which is already on site, and instead of have him ring back when there is smoke, we give him a fire extinguisher.”
Deploying the NextNine solution enables customers to:
Next Nine recently announced that INFINITT North America, a purveyor of medical imaging software, is using NextNine's support automation solution for their PACS and 3D imaging applications. PACS is short for picture archiving and communication systems. These are essentially computers or networks dedicated to the storage, retrieval, distribution and presentation of images, in this case to serve a medical audience.
NextNine’s Virtual Support Engineer powers INFINITT's Omni ITS system, enabling the company to more effectively monitor the customer's system performance remotely and in real time. Once the system recognizes that something is amiss, it automatically diagnoses the issue, collects the data it needs, and begins the healing process.
According to David Smarro, CEO, INFINITT North America, “With over a decade of experience in PACS and 3D, we take great pride in our ability to guarantee responsive and reliable customer service before and after implementation of our system. NextNine’s support automation platform helps us keep that promise.”
According to Reichenberg, the opportunity for NextNine is significant.
“We are noticing increased traction for proactive support automation in both its traditional industries as well as in new industries,” Reichenberg told TMCnet. “In traditional industries, such as process automation and complex medical devices, remote services are quickly making the shift from serving as a competitive advantage to becoming part of the ‘cost of doing business.’ Leading vendors are realizing they need to implement proactive, remote support in order to remain competitive. In new industries, such as enterprise software, we see the visionary players implementing proactive support to differentiate their offerings.”
NextNine continues to innovate as it faces down the various challenges it encounters on its road to success.
“As companies move beyond the initial stage of implementing proactive support automation, they are faced with new challenges, Reichenberg said. “One such challenge is messaging the value of remote services to their customers — since most problems are solved remotely and before they impact the end customer, vendors need to help customers understand the benefits they are providing in exchange for the maintenance and support fees. Another challenge is improving the integration of proactive support solutions with the different tools used by support organizations, such as CRM and knowledge management.
“NextNine will address these challenges and more in the coming months, improving reporting mechanisms that will demonstrate customer value, allowing easy integration to enterprise systems — all while maintaining the simplicity, flexibility and ease of deployment that made NextNine service automation the choice for some of the world's leading enterprise including Motorola, Honeywell and GE Healthcare.”
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Greg Galitzine (News - Alert) is editorial director of TMCnet. To read more of Greg’s articles, please visit his columnist page.
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