The Red Hat Customer Portal was built in 2010 to serve as an access hub where customers could find everything they would need to get the most from their Red Hat products. It has and continues to provide a single place where customers can search for knowledge, download software, manage their accounts, and interact with their peers and Red Hat support associates. The Customer Portal enables Red Hat to offer our customers proactive advice and support throughout the entire product lifecycle, from planning through deployment to troubleshooting and maintenance.

The Red Hat Customer Portal is home to knowledge and expertise you can only get from Red Hat. This knowledge is created through the Knowledge-Centered Support (KCSSM) model, a methodology and set of practices and processes that focuses on knowledge as a key asset of the customer/technical support organization.* Knowledge-Centered Support is Red Hat's way of offering solutions and articles for known questions or problems.

Red Hat Knowledge is inherently customer driven; more than 48,000 articles and solutions have been written to help our customers quickly find the answers they need when they need them. The Red Hat engineers writing the code for our products, are the same ones writing and reviewing the knowledge content on the Customer Portal. With Red Hat customers using documentation more than 330 times per minute, it is essential we provide them with information that is accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.

With some of the recent security vulnerabilities, Red Hat customers have been able to rely on Red Hat's knowledge for thorough and up-to-date information. For instance, with the “Shellshock” vulnerability, we were able to provide Red Hat customers with a comprehensive response that included proactive email notifications, comprehensive packages for all supported products, a self-detection tool, and best practices. Our knowledgebase article on the vulnerability provided information about affected products, remediation steps, and information about how to test your bash version for vulnerabilities. Our Red Hat Access Labs Self-detection tool enabled customers to identify whether their environment was vulnerable. All of which was easily found and readily available on the Red Hat Customer Portal. Red Hat knowledge and expertise gives our customers confidence that their software is safe so they can focus on their business.

Knowledge found in the Red Hat Customer Portal is unparalleled in the industry; no other company knows Red Hat products more than Red Hat engineers and experts. The knowledge creation process ensures customers operate Red Hat products in the best way possible. Customers receive the most value from their subscription via the knowledge and tools in the Customer Portal which can help them prevent issues in their environment and applications. This is what provides the real advantage.

To visit the knowledge section of the Red Hat Customer Portal, visit https://access.redhat.com/subscription-value#knowledge.

* sm - KCS is a service mark of the Consortium for Service Innovation


About the author

Marco Bill-Peter is the senior vice president of Customer Experience and Engagement (CEE) at Red Hat. CEE is responsible for increasing the value customers and partners receive from their relationship with Red Hat. In addition to technical support delivery and strategic customer engagement, Bill-Peter's organization is responsible for the award-winning Red Hat Customer Portal, quality engineering, DevOps, product certifications, product security, product documentation, and translation services.

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