Remote Data Center Management Just Got Easier

Equinix is proud to power the world’s digital leaders, and we continue to put our customers at the center of everything we do. In 2020, we saw a 30% increase in the usage of Equinix Smart Hands®, our 24/7 on-site operational support service for remote management, installation and troubleshooting of customer data center equipment. We saw this increase as an opportunity to continue to improve the Smart Hands user experience with new, intuitive functionality that addresses pain points for our users. The new Smart Hands release contains several of these new features and improved functionality.

What is Equinix Smart Hands?

Smart Hands lets you schedule or request a variety of services, including equipment installation, remote management, asset management, rack and stack services, cabling services, troubleshooting and logistics support. Using the Equinix Customer Portal (ECP), customers can view their order status and invoices, access reports and account information and place orders for products.

What’s new in this release?

In a previous blog, we talked about our goal of providing a streamlined, end-to-end Smart Hands experience for ordering and scheduling for all of these services. Here’s how we are doing that in the new release:

• In-app self-service help: Our new intelligent ordering solution provides in-app guidance, tutorials and near real-time customer contact to help guide new users in how to place Smart Hands orders.
• Simple product catalogue: We’ve better consolidated and organized the various Smart Hands categories across Equipment, Cabling, Logistics, and Cage services, making it easier to select and order the appropriate Smart Hands services.
• Better support for large orders: With this release, users can now easily place requests for large orders (between 24 and 200 cables or equipment builds between 100 and 500 Rus) through the ECP.
• Better insight into your order status and history: A new Beta launch of the Smart Hands order status interface provides the options you selected, pricing details, contacts details and scope of work. We’ve also added status updates to make the entire order lifecycle more transparent, with filters to give you better insights into your order and ticket history, and even a way to communicate directly with Equinix International Business Exchange™ (IBX®) data center technicians through the order history interface.
• Easier service scheduling: Our customers spoke, and we heard – you wanted it to be easier to request Smart Hands services and schedule technicians. New forms for placing and bundling orders, additional scheduling options (including recurring, flexible and earliest available), a new interface to review your orders, and pre-designed order templates all make the service scheduling process more efficient to save you time.

We know you are busy running your business. Spending time talking to someone about how to use a scheduling tool is probably not high on your priority list. We designed the new Smart Hands functionality to be easy from the first use, without any sales support. An in-app tour of the new functionality and embedded tutorials empower our customers to help themselves without any additional training.

So, what are you waiting for? Learn more about Smart Hands or take a quick tour of the new functionality and find out how easy we have made it to manage your data center equipment remotely.