Top Trend #5: Support, training & superior customer experience are essential elements in a best of breed OTA updates solution

It’s common practice now for IoT product managers and digital leaders to buy in technology and not use their precious developers to build low level infrastructure such as an OTA updates solution in-house. The benefit of partnering is to free up more time and resources to focus on core product development to gain competitive advantage in the market. It's a smart decision based on an assessment of opportunity cost. Immediate technical support, access to expert help with your more complex use cases; and professional skills development are the benefits of working with a best of breed partner for OTA updates.

Technical support in a commercial agreement for Mender Enterprise is an insurance policy that you will have a trusted expert in embedded engineering or software deployment to contact if something goes wrong with your project.

Mender engineers understand how best to set up OTA updates in embedded environments. Your project can benefit from this and avoid costly mistakes. If something stops working, someone will help you out quickly. At its core, you can address issues with the Mender set up that might be blocking your operations or progress. Also a support problem is a great starting point for making feature requests.

High customer satisfaction

Customer satisfaction with the quality of Mender Enterprise edition technical support is high - rated 4.2 out of 5 in our most recent satisfaction survey carried out in January 2022. Mender Enterprise customers were happy with the quarterly check-ins with the Mender product team; and the ability to request a Mender roadmap presentation.

Mender is rated 4.7 out of 5 stars on G2, Mender Enterprise customers have shared their feedback on the quality of support and partnership through this trusted platform.

Beyond the tech docs

Mender has excellent documentation: they can be used to set up many use cases. However, solving more complex use cases may require the expertise of the Mender customer engineering support team.

Reliability and uptime

Using the Hosted Mender service means that your development team doesn't have to maintain a server for OTA updates. With hosted Mender, the Mender engineering team is responsible for the maintenance of your hosted tenants and adding new features based on market validated requirements. If you use Mender open source, your development team will have to self host and manage servers and for ideating and developing new features for your homegrown OTA updates solution. It could be a drain on your resources. By partnering with Mender, you can focus on your core digital product development and allow the Mender team to maintain the low level infrastructure for you. You also have the reassurance that the hosted OTA updates service is up and running and operating as expected through the Hosted Mender Status Page. You can enjoy peace of mind knowing that a team of experts within the Mender engineering team monitor the back end to ensure that the hosted service is operational.

Influence the roadmap with your needs

A crucial part of being an Enterprise customer is that you have a commercial contract: we can set you up with professional services. If you propose new features, they will get a higher level of attention. This proximity to the product development process can help drive your innovation by helping you get the best capabilities for your device management. For example, Mender Gateway is a new feature developed for Mender Enterprise customers only, based on customer feedback gathered from support interactions. Synchronized Updates¹ is another feature that came from a dialogue on customer needs as an enterprise device management project evolved.

Training in OTA and device management

Training is also a key element of partnership: By working closely with the Mender team, your technology group can build up their expertise in software and device management and understand how to get the most out of Mender for your edge and cloud infrastructure. By partnering with a best of breed partner, your team can avail of dedicated training workshops and accelerate the maturity of your project.

Professional services

Custom services may be required so that you get Mender in the format you need to match the needs of your project. It applies both to board integrations and on-premise Mender set ups. It is important to clearly separate out support, training and professional services as distinct and separate items. With a hosted Mender Enterprise solution, your account manager can help manage expectations and find a solution for your project when it goes beyond what can be typically provided by support.

Try out Mender Enterprise

• Sign up for the free trial
• Check out the tech docs and see if it fits your use case

Notes

1. The synchronized updates feature has since been deprecated – read more here.