Excellent Customer Experiences
A shout out to our friends at Coach, an American luxury design brand, owned and operated by Tapestry. When you must take out a small personal loan to purchase shoes or a handbag these days, you expect it to last for a while. Everything breaks down eventually, so maintenance is always something to consider when you invest in whatever it is you are purchasing.
A three to seven-year horizon is standard for most technology, sometimes longer particularly for software platforms. A data center is a much larger and more complicated project with expected life cycles of 15 – 20 years, but far less if you are unwise. Substantial planning and foresight are essential to preserve long term value and are incrementally more economic when incorporated into the initial design.
In the case of the luxurious shoes that I purchased as a gift, they were built to last with attributes of quality you would expect, including: real boot leather exterior, softer leather lining, leather soles and heel, bronze clasps that are secured with screws and not glue, and a high-quality zipper.
The good news is that the good people at Coach stand by their products. In the case of shoes, these works of art had been in use for about 10 years. Coach did not waste my time with an experimental chat bot that just deployed yesterday. They had a real person at the other end of the chat who responded quickly, found the underlying cause of the issue, provided detailed instructions on the next steps, all with politeness and efficiency that I expect from a salesperson representing a luxury brand. The best news of all, in this case a $20 thumb clasp need not ruin the enjoyment of a much more expensive pair of beloved shoes.
Carefully consider your investments in data centers and technology. The screws matter: the site is important, the planning is significant, and the relationships matter. You will own the infrastructure for a long time, and your company is deploying a sizable amount of capital in support of future success for the company’s strategic projects. You want partners that you can trust and will be there for you when something goes wrong. It is not an ‘if,’ it is a ‘when,’ meaning it is all about how you manage challenges as they arise.