One of the most advanced (and cool) deployments of remote service software I have seen is from storage industry leader NetApp. On his blog this week, Senior Vice President of Global Support for NetApp, Rusty Walther, provides some great insight into their next generation remote service capability called the Remote Support Diagnostics Tool.

From Rusty's Blog:

"A while back, we started thinking about what our next-generation of remote support tools should look like.  We talked to a lot of customers, fully digested what worked and didn't work about our prior generation tool (SupportConsole), and also took a long, hard look at the competitive landscape.

The result was a design that embedded into every high-end controller, didn't require any new hardware, allowed the customer to determine if and when it could be accessed, had the ability to "view" everything but "change" nothing, and had Symantec-certified security characteristics to protect against any vulnerability. It had to have all those features, along with the most important one ... allowing a Technical Support Engineer to troubleshoot problems "as if" they were sitting in front of the controller, but prohibited them from ever accessing the data, changing the configuration, or disrupting file services in any way. "

Rusty goes on to describe the new features introduced by the Remote Support Diagnostics Tool, but my favorite part is the reference to the magic of the solution being powered by Axeda:

"This magic is based upon an RLM card integrated into the ONTAP operating system, with an Axeda diagnostic agent surrounded by custom code, and integrated into both our workflow and our support systems. How cool is that?"

We are continuously impressed by our customers and how they apply their expertise to Axeda technology to take customer support to new levels. Congrats to Rusty and NetApp on the launch!