Over the last few days, I’ve been on the road with customers – and it never ceases to energize me to see how much our customers put their faith, their trust in EMC. Whether it’s VMAX “holding off the zombie apocalypse”, Isilon bringing your movies/genomics to you, XtremIO, VNX, ScaleIO, ViPR, ECS, Data Domain, VSPEX Blue, Vblock, DPS software – whatever. When a customer chooses us – they are placing their faith in us.

It’s a solemn duty for all EMCers to never take that for granted, to strive to deliver on that promise, and when we fall down – to stand side by side with that customer and never stop until we have renewed on our commitment.

Sometimes, in my experience – how we react when the chips are down (which happens to everyone) is often the time where our partnership with the customer is actually forged at high temperature.

Customer service also isn’t a “somebody thing” (like the customer service team) – but an everyone thing: sales, SEs, engineering, marketing, everyone.

We are FAR from perfect (I like all the exec team see all the most painful issues around the globe) – and we are always striving to get better.

But – sometimes you get the ultimate payback – when a customer says “thank you”, and “we depend on you”, and I got that on a recent trip to several customers in Minneapolis (thank you to them and to the local EMC teams!)

Sometimes you see customers doing crazy things that are a illustration of that love. The “VMAX fridge” actually came from a customer idea – and I got this one this week from a customer that made a gift for someone on their team that was leaving:

And here it is open:

That is an awesome one-of-a-kind personalized retirement gift - it shows love, thanks, and a dedication of the person’s team to that individual.

The fact that it is a VNX cabinet (they are an all-VNX shop, including VNXe) means that in a sense (a secondary sense), we are part of that (along with partner – World Wide Technologies - that supports the customer also)… Well, that’s a great honor.

To that customer – thank you. We won’t let you down.