MWC: Dell's New ProSupport Leverages IoT And BigData For Enterprise-Class Client Device Support

All PC manufacturers, including the big three comprising Dell , Hewlett-Packard , and Lenovo , are looking to lower support costs and improve the support experience.  Client-device support for PCs and tablets has traditionally lagged behind the datacenter and enterprise apps, and that generally speaking, continues to be the case. Most current models of client device support generally involve the traditional manual support model that generally requires the user’s system to fail. Once the failure is established, and only then, does the user generally go through a lengthy and costly process of getting support and eventually resolving the problem. Dell ’s new ProSupport Plus incorporates a lot of the enterprise support experience that they already have and winds it into the client space by using Big Data and IoT (internet of things) to improve the overall client device support experience. It also helps companies save time and money by reducing the amount of support calls and productivity lost due to downtime. If you’re looking for a detailed drill-down, you can download our paper here.

Powered by Big Data and IoT

Dell’s ProSupport Plus, recently announced for PCs and tablets, brings predictive and proactive automated support to the client space. Dell accomplishes this proactive and predictive support system with a combination of both IoT and Big Data technologies to gather and analyze data and then predict the issues. This allows Dell to support the product anticipating any issues based on information they have in their systems about that specific product and hardware configuration. This would theoretically mean that the more devices that are deployed with ProSupport Plus should also make it even more accurate at predicting issues and pre-emptively resolving them.

This is all possible thanks to Dell’s acquisition of Compellent, which gives them a set of leading management, monitoring and reporting technologies. Dell’s software, which is installed on the client system then collects a multitude of health and system state data and communicates it through certain outbound-only APIs and feeds it into Dell’s servers that collect and analyze the data in order to help pre-empt problems and anticipate resolutions.

Saving time and money

Through this model of support, Dell’s ProSupport Plus is able to resolve issues for small and large customers, in most cases, without them having to encounter a problem. Dell’s ProSupport Plus looks like the future of client support and allows virtually everyone to save both time and money in the support process. By eliminating the need for reactionary support, Dell removes the need for a client device user to have to call into support and trouble shoot an issue. In fact, with Dell ProSupport Plus users may never know they ever had an issue to begin with.

This model of support where end users are never aware of an issue not only helps the business save time and money, but it also helps Dell build a stronger brand where customers simply believe that the brand is flawless. Obviously, no products are perfect and that’s why Dell ProSupport Plus exists. By being pre-emptive with support Dell is able to send replacement parts to the IT department of the client device and notify them of the issue and they can backup data and replace the component before it ever even fails. This makes the user absolutely unaware of any issues whatsoever and it also results in less money and time spent on support and no productivity lost due to downtime.

Wrapping up…

As product differentiation becomes a more and more difficult thing to accomplish in the commoditized client computing world, companies will need to look for ways to improve their support. Dell has incorporated their enterprise experience into Dell ProSupport Plus in order to bring predictive and proactive support to the client space where it is desperately needed. Dell accomplishes this by taking their IoT and Big Data support architecture and using it to gather and analyze data to prevent support calls and downtime, both of which ultimately end up costing companies time and money. If you’re looking for a detailed drill-down, you can download our paper here. Nice job Dell.

You can find Patrick Moorhead, Founder, President & Principal Analyst of Moor Insights & Strategy on the web, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+.

Note: Anshel Sag, staff technologist and technical writer at Moor Insights & Strategy, contributed to this article.

Disclosure: My firm,  Moor Insights & Strategy, like all research and analyst firms, provides or has provided research, analysis, advising, and/or consulting to many high-tech companies, including Dell, cited in this article. No employees at the firm hold any equity positions with any companies cited in this column.