We are in constant contact with our customers, so we frequently hear anecdotal feedback. In addition, every year we like to capture that feedback into quantifiable terms. We contract with an independent research firm, Velociti Partners, to formally survey our JBoss Enterprise Middleware customers via phone interviews and web-based surveys. The graph shows a summary or the responses for the 2009 study. You can also read the full study here. We are very proud to announce that Red Hat customers deploying JBoss Enterpirse Middleware have ranked us #1 in customer satisfaction over ten measurement categories.

 

In the study the respondents were either developers, IT operations, development managers or architects, and most of them also had experience deploying proprietary middleware in their environments as well as JBoss Enterprise Middleware. The goal of the survey was two fold. First, to understand the satisfaction level for Red Hat’s JBoss Enterprise Middleware customers. Second, to compare ourselves to our proprietary competitors.

Notably, JBoss Enterprise Middleware customers consistently ranked us above IBM’s WebSphere and Oracle’s WebLogic in ALL of the following key areas:

  • Understanding Needs
  • Meeting SLAs
  • Professional Service
  • Knowledge Transfer
  • Pricing
  • Support Value
  • Product Knowledge (own product and other vendor’s product)
  • Multi-Channel Access
  • Access to Key Staff
  • Customer Loyalty

Customer satisfaction and loyalty is an important measure for any company but especially in open source, which aims to eliminate vendor lock-in, and where we must earn our customer’s business every year because of the nature of the subscription model. For the 3rd year in a row, customers gave JBoss Enterprise Middleware and Red Hat high marks in the Velociti Partners study. These sentiments are in line with the recent CIO Insight rankings which put Red Hat in the top position for reliability and value for the fifth time.

We are proud of our technical and support staff for an outstanding dedication to making our customers successful, and as we head into 2010 we look to continue this level of service for our customers.